With a new school year underway, The Boise School District introduced new guidelines to promote student success in school.
In August 2024, The Boise School District implemented a new limitation on district-provided student devices such as Chromebooks, only allowing students to access two social platforms: YouTube and LinkedIn.
Boise High School Principal Deborah Watts shared that LinkedIn offers a useful networking opportunity for seniors as they prepare for college. Watts also explained the importance of YouTube to have as a resource in the classroom.
“YouTube has a ton of educational resources out there,” Watts said. “If we said that there was no YouTube access available on campus, that really limits a lot of what our teachers are able to do as well in terms of educational resources.”
Watts added that resources on YouTube can range from short video clips to tutorials for teachers to share with their students.
The Chromebooks are connected to the school’s Wi-Fi network, barring students from accessing other social media platforms. Students are also blocked from accessing social media from their Boise School District account.
According to a recent study conducted by Yale Medicine, teenagers between 12-15 years old who spend at least three hours a day on social media are more likely to experience mental health problems such as anxiety and depression.
In addition, schools in the Boise School District like Boise High School are furthering their efforts to prevent cell phone usage from becoming a distraction for students in the classroom.
According to Watts, each school in the Boise School District may have a different consequence for students who are caught with their cell phones during class time.
Boise High School enforced a four-step violation for cell phones. The first violation is a verbal warning, second violation results in a student losing their cell phone for one day, third violation results in losing their cell phone for up to five days and fourth violation results in loss of phone for the semester.
In the first two weeks, 107 total violations were reported out of 1,600 total students.
Watts acknowledged the positive feedback she’s received from parents and teachers in response to this new cell phone policy.
“I have not received one negative piece of feedback, most of the feedback has just been ‘thank you so much for following through with this,’” Watts said. “From teachers, what we’re hearing is just they’re just so much more engaged and they’re not distracted.”
Jennifer McClain, an Advanced Placement (AP) literature English teacher at Boise High, expressed the “night and day” differences in classroom participation with her students just a couple weeks into the new school year.
“I don’t have to repeat myself 14 times over [during] instructions, the students are getting work submitted and it’s good,” McClain said. “[I] even had one parent on back to school night tell me that their kid was able to come home and explain what was going on for the day, because they were engaged.”
McClain touched on the potential impact this new cell phone policy can have on students’ communication skills.
“I think we lost the ability to have a conversation, I don’t just mean students, I mean generally speaking,” McClain said. “We lost that conversational piece, so I think it’s going to help them rebuild that conversation, which I think is going to be an improvement. It’s a skill we all need in the workforce.”
McClain mentioned that in previous years, students were constantly on social media. Now, she feels that she doesn’t have to work for students’ engagement.
“We always want to lean towards the things that are fun or interesting and kind of appeal to us,” McClain said. “[I’m] not having to compete and I’m not playing that game of ‘do you have your phone secretly?’ — it’s altered the interactions between staff and students in a positive way and between students.”
Boise High School senior Lucy Russell says that she was initially hesitant of the new policy, posing questions if it could become a safety issue or if they would still be able to use their phones for certain classes.
Russell expressed that this new policy is benefiting the students at Boise High School.
“I think that it’s been really good for all students at Boise [High School],” Russell said. “I was definitely expecting a worse response from kids, but really everyone is super receptive to it.”
Russell says that in class, she’s noticed other students completing homework or connecting with their peers during freetime as opposed to being on their phones.
Russell noted that this policy has had a positive effect on her outside of school.
“I was having a conversation with a couple of my friends the other day. We were all talking about how outside of school, we’ve noticed ourselves being on our phones less,” Russell said. “Just because we kind of get in that habit after being at school for seven hours a day, not on our phones, then we go home and stay off of it and limit our social media time.”
According to a collection report by Boise High School Librarian Natasha Rush, library circulations have increased by 52% in the first month of school compared to this time last year.
“I was under the impression that these phones are becoming a public health crisis,” Rush said. “I’ve just seen major changes over the last decade in kids. So I’m hoping that this is a sign of good things to come, and I work really hard to develop a collection [of books] that’s diverse, speaks to all of our students and has lots of good, high interest reading.”
