At least one Kansas district is projecting $150,000 to $180,000 just to equip secondary students with individual phone lockers, according to the Wichita Eagle. The state provided zero dedicated funding. Every dollar comes from local budgets.
Districts choosing fabric locking pouches — think Yondr, the magnetic-lock system concert venues use to keep audiences present — face an estimated $30 per unit. Statewide, the Kansas Division of the Budget put that figure at roughly $13.4 million if every student received one, according to the Lawrence KS Times. Lockers require a steeper upfront investment. Neither option came with a state check attached.
Legislators passed the policy. The price tag was someone else’s problem.
They could just leave them at home. I mean that worked just fine literally forever until these last two generations.
But, since both parents and kids are now addicted to the damn things, no one can imagine not having one in their hand for more than five minutes.
That requires an honesty system and kids aren’t honest
And cooperative parents
Some aren’t. You’d be surprised how far you can get by talking to teens like equals.
Well it’s the bad few eggs that ruin it for everyone
Worked so well, let’s avoid looking at the states of the world… Just install parental control and look the phone during their school time like a fucking responsible parent…
Or better yet, teach your kid responsible usage and live them alone.
Seem legit, didn’t take in account that kid dont’ hâve a fully developed brain and capitalists know that and exploit that. Sure be a good parent and let capitalist pedo teach your kids without supervisions, what a great idea.
You might be loosing a grip here a bit
Why because I don’t want n d to be influenced and broken by FB and other crazy shit ?
Man, you can’t even teach adults that.
I tought people computers for some time. As long as there is some motivation, you can teach an 80 years old violin teacher to patch Linux drivers and recompile kernel.
It worked, but not well. I remember standing in line for 20 minutes waiting on the one phone to call my parents so they knew my after school activity was done. (while other students were calling their parents).
When your phone is your GPS and radio, no. I was in band, and some days we wouldn’t leave school afterwards because we’d be going to a game across the state. After the game, my mom would want to know where I was, which was usually Waffle House with a dozen others.
I don’t know if I am supposed to be angry about this or not. Someone tell me if I’m supposed to be angry!
Schools are scared to death of kids recording their staff being stupid, and each other. Legal liability/parental outrage. They block both phones and smart watches. If it were just a usage problem, they could have done what we always do and only take things away when they’re an issue.
Since the advent of phones, this hasn’t been a real problem.
My son’s school collects them at the classroom door if they have them out, or ignores it if they’re in their bag as long as they don’t make noise. - free
Kansas, who is already horrible at maintaining educational budgets to a self-destructive degree wants to spend 150k of (likely unwilling) taxpayer money to provide fancy lockers for phones that could be solved by leave it in your bag and off, if we find it on or it makes noise, you get detention.
It’s a stupid waste or resources and time.
if 0 is the Byrds Turn Turn Turn and 10 is RaTM bulls on parade, maybe go 6 or 7
It’s likely also plain corruption, just lawmakers creating ways for their friends to siphon money from government budgets with useless gadgets like this.
150k is for a single district, statewide they plan to waste millions on this
Seems like a straightforward solution to a simple problem. Pretty direct correlation with kids having access to smartphones vs declining grades and attention spans.
In schools that have started simply not allowing phones in class, grades have improved. This seems like the next logical step. Its basically just returning to pre-smartphone days. Schools used to confiscate phones if you had them out at all during school hours.
People will disagree with simple solutions, but those are often the ones that works. Phones cause problems, get rid of phones. Simple and direct.
Whoa whoa whoa now. Whoa. That is an entirely too reasonable take. No conspiracy, no blaming capitalism or someone trying to scam and grift. Just a reasonable take. Hmmph, I am disappoint. I have nothing to be angry about now. Hmmph!
Are there any studies that link phone use inside schools to those issues? Because I can easily believe that declining grades could be attributed towards the use of tablets and laptops being used in classrooms as well which many schools are encouraging or increasing the use of.
As for attention spans I would believe it’s for the use of phones/tablets/electronics from a young age rather than the use of them inside of a school itself.
Internet rage confusion :D
Bring two phones. Problem solved.
The problem of being distracted in class can be solved by having two phones? Weird!
Freedom or fascism.
What do you mean to say? It’s not clear to me.
I’m of two minds on this.
Decoy phone lol
Don’t say that. Then they’ll buy another safe for the decoy phones.
They don’t want the next batshit stupid school shooting response to be so public.
This is how the kids know they are not in an institution of learning, but a prison for the crime of being juvenile.
What we’re also not going to hear is how often devices are misplaced, confiscated without return or just dissappear like socks in a dryer.
How does this work, are all students required to put a phone in the locker? What about kids who can’t afford a phone?
And what about kids who get a second phone to put in the locker so they can keep their main phone?
Suddenly all the kids have old flip phones to deposit into the Phone locker.
What about kids who can’t afford a phone?
No phone = Nothing to deposit
And what about kids who get a second phone to put in the locker so they can keep their main phone?
Get rekt. Rules for the poor.
OK, then what about the kids who only have 1 phone but claim to have none?
Confiscation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sooooo exactly what happened two decades ago with phones and gameboys? This is so stupid. I got my phone confiscated a few times in high school and had to pay the school $15 or wait 15 days to get it back. Why is this not an option anymore?
Because parents are lunatics and administration is spineless.
Absolutely, yes.
Had my phone rooted and it suddenly crashed and rebooted mid-class blasting Titanium by David Guetta at full volume for it’s boot sequence.
I could get it back after the school day but I am still not over it >:(But yeah, just confiscate it and get it back after school is done.
Only if they get caught. Seems like a lot of money for a flawed system.
Get rekt. Rules for the poor.
Fantastic news, I’m glad they’re proactively seeking solutions
I’m seeing alot of comments about how this will or won’t work for how much the price is, but this made me think of something else.
Don’t we give kids chromebooks/devices anyway. I assume the point of these lockers is to force kids to pay attention, but chromebooks are waaaaaay worst than any phone a parent gave them.
You can threaten a kid to take their phone away, but you can almost argue you can’t take the chromebook away because that’s where all their assignments, tasks, books, notes, etc are all stored. And from my experience, people were always goofing off on other sites or playing games. Unless the school is able to monitor and lock down those chromebooks (which if we’re being honest, have the bare minimum of parental controls), then this is just throwing money at a fire instead of, I dunno, paying teachers better to actually help kids learn instead of moderating their tiktok addictions
There are webfilters for all edu devices… Except Windows 11 SE and that’s because the hardware can’t even run the OS.
But fr… At least Chromebooks are easy to lock down if gadmin and 3rd party filters are set up.
It doesnt look like returning the devices has to be immediate or convenient. Heres my proposed plan:
Ban devices entirely. Any item discovered gets confiscated, labeled, and placed in a bin in the office (achieving the “secure” location requirement of the bill.) Students are permitted to label their item. Items are available for pickup weekly at the end of a district-wide midday “value of education” parental education session.
Labelmaker: ~$200/school
Labels: $0.01/item
2 hrs labor weekly: 38×2×$50=$3800/district/year
Value of inconveniencing parents enough to care: priceless.
Banning phones doesn’t work.
Source: my high school
Banning sexual assault, bulling, rape and pedophilia doesn’t work either. Source: my secondary school.
Look valid, crappy idea. So now the director is responsible if a child is stuck somewhere and can’t reach it’s parents while going to school or coming from school.
They do it like me in ye olden days of the 2000s:
- Alert the teacher
- Go to the school secretary office and ask for the phone
That was before enshitification. They dropped pur kid at a random bus stop two weeks before the end os school, bus had issues, we had to go fetch them 2km away. They warned nobody and counted on kid to warn their parents… In this case you expect them to do what ?
Well in that case, you have to give the bus drivers rigorous training to reflect the cell phone policy. The bus driver absolutely should not have done that to your kid. That is not acceptable at all. However, that driver probably only did that because they knew your kid had a phone. If they instead knew that no kids in the school are allowed to have phones, they probably would never do something like that. It’s a giant legal liability for the bussing company.
Yeah look nice on paper.
I was expected to walk my own ass to school.
I did it by foot and bike.
And 2km is (depending on age) not much.A warning to impacted parents would be neat though.
It depends, really? 2km of well maintained sidewalks and walkable streets is very different from 2km of no sidewalks and unprotected highway crossings. The school I went to as a kid specifically banned walking home because we had the latter and a kid had got hit and killed because of it.
Lol I used to walk 2 miles home with limited sidewalks in the 2000s, everyone’s so fucking scared and lazy now.
Of course the US is not capable of creating sidewalks 🙄
So you expect rule from the 70th to apply in the 2020th ?
I am from the 2000s but k
I can do it for $149k
This is just to promote Musk Neurolink.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper if they have them magnet pouches
The withdrawal symptoms would be interesting to observe.
Yes, let’s take away student’s ability to call for help during a way too common American emergency event. What could go wrong?
Yes, and let’s never address the problems that cause so many school shootings.
We should only ever apply band-aids to wounds.
Taking a away the phone during school hours is another band aid.
Practicality, there isn’t a single solution that will stop the shootings, a dozen band aids is better than doing nothing. You can get rid of the phones, could invest that 150k into to the salary of a school therapist, pay teachers more so they aren’t all depressed and overworked. Hire more teachers so classes aren’t 30+, maybe they’d be able to focus on a kid for more than 3 minutes a day. In other words actually fund education.
But sense that none of that is likely to happen this decade,
I don’t like the idea of taking away kids ability to call 911 in an emergency. This isn’t 1980. Classroom phones are an option, but many have switched to voip and rely on some major internet service not being randomly down that day. Supposedly they’d work with 911 no matter what, but I wouldn’t rely on that.
Could switch to dumb phone or set up parental controls to block internet access, and various apps, during school hours, while still allowing phone calls.
Taking away phones is the adult thing to do, I don’t know how many kids you’ve interacted with lately, but trust me, they’re dumber than dogshit.
I’m pretty schools have enough phones and adults to have calling 911 covered many times over, with nary a student having a cell phone.
I know, I went to school before they existed. We did fine.