Last April was a big month for Minnesota legislature. A new landmark education bill (HF 3782) was passed, covering anything from banning book bans to increasing student journalist rights. This 2024-2025 school year, Park has seen many of these new policies enforced in the district.
One highlight of the bill that has been noticed by many Park students is state-wide enforcement of a cell phone policy in Minnesota public and charter schools. According to Minnesota State Representative Cheryl Youakim, the cell phone policy requirement is now a statewide expectation, but each district is responsible for creating their own policy.
“We set up policies saying the School Board Association has to have a model policy to implement cell phone policies in schools. Then, schools themselves implement and decide how that works, and some of them already were doing it,” Youakim said.
According to principal Lanisha Paddock, there were two options the school board association recommended. Park decided to implement a ‘limited access’ policy, rather than a cell phone ban, which has been in place for a year or two.
“Each district is responsible for (implementing a policy) on their own, but there has been some guidance from the state on what that can look like. There were two models, the first one was no cell phones, no part of the day,” Paddock said. “Then there was another option, which we chose to lean into, which wasn’t much different than what we have done. There was a slight difference, which was limited access, which has been in our handbook for a year or so. This said, (phones can be used) before and after school, during passing times (and) during lunchtime.”
Youakim said one reason for the district-wide cell phone policy requirement is to protect teachers and schools from liability issues concerning cell phones. According to Youakim, having a locally enforced system allows the policy to be managed in a more productive way.
“For a district to take a cell phone away from a student, there’s liability because that costs money. You have to have everybody in the school on the same page,” Youakim said. “It’s hard to have a district where they say ‘each teacher and classroom can decide’ because, one, it’s confusing for the students. Two, if the teacher takes the phone away and then puts it in the drawer, it gets banged up. Is the district liable, or is the teacher liable? (In order to reduce liability issues) we have a very locally controlled system where school districts have a lot of latitude on how they make choices, with their funding streams.”
According to Paddock, the school removed teacher-approved cell phone time, and is now implementing a stricter policy, in which students cannot use their phones at all during class periods. Paddock said the district has been very clear with staff, students and families, making sure everyone is on the same page.
“(The district is) being very clear with everybody in our community. A couple of weeks ago I sent out a letter that said, ‘this is our policy, this is the impact of cell phone usage, there’s all kinds of data on how it negatively impacts students’s abilities to learn,’” Paddock said. “Just making sure that we’re communicating with families, with staff and with students and being very clear about the expectations and then holding them in loving accountability. It’s been pretty successful, but it takes all of us in the building to do that. We want to make sure our kids are successful and if (a staff member) is going off and doing something different, that really impacts the way the rest of us are able to do our jobs.”
Assistant principal Evelyn Lashley said watching students become more dependent on their cell phones after COVID-19 has been hard. She said she hopes this cell phone policy will allow students more opportunities to collaborate and socialize again.
“I’ve been in the district for the last 10 years, so I watched the COVID slump and the really high dependency on cell phone use. That’s hard to see students feeling a little more isolated or more connected to their device than the people that are sitting with them,” Lashley said. “Over the last couple of years, just seeing (everyone) climb out of that hole has been really encouraging because not only is that helping students’ mental health, as lots of research shows, but it’s also allowing them to relearn how to interact with their peers.”
According to Paddock, there’s been a higher level of engagement in classrooms. While observing classes, Paddock said there has been less phone usage and more learning.
“As I go into classrooms and observe, I’ve been very pleased because I haven’t seen many cell phones out. That is encouraging because that means our communities are really leaning into the policy,” Paddock said. “Also, I’m seeing higher levels of engagement, kids are working in groups. I’ve visited multiple classrooms and every single class I visited, the kids were highly engaged, they were working, they knew what the task was. That’s my evidence that what we’re doing is working because we’re trying to maximize the time.”
Although there have been positive outcomes of the cell phone policy, senior Abigail Oppegaard said she uses her cell phone as a learning tool. She said the stricter policy has made it harder for her to concentrate on work because she is unable to access resources, like music, she’s used in the past.
“The cell phone policy is largely unhelpful. Kids are still going (to) go on their phones and, at least for me, I use my phone as a learning tool. I look things up on my phone or I listen to music on my phone. The biggest sticking point for me is the music thing,” Oppegaard said. “I use (music) as a tool to learn so I can focus when we have work time, and if I can’t use that, that’s the opposite of helpful to my education. I know that a lot of other students feel similarly and I personally don’t think it’s a good use of teachers’ time to try to be enforcing that. If you want to learn, you’re going to learn, and if you don’t, you’re not going to, regardless of your phone.”
In addition to a new statewide cell phone policy, Minnesota public schools are now required to teach about mental health in health classes. According to Youakim, Minnesota assembled a Youth Council to help build state standards surrounding health class and mental health teaching. Each district will also be able to create their own curriculum to meet the new state standards.
“Before this year, there were different little sections in law that said you have to teach CPR, you have to teach about vaping, you have to teach about addiction (and) you have to teach about mental health, but there was no real set standard. It was just left up to the school district and how they were going to teach that. That’s what (Minnesota legislature) changed this year, we’re going to do a state standard,” said Youakim. “We added the Minnesota Youth Council at the table because we want to admit voices. Now, for the next two years, they’re going to put that together, but until those standards are set in place and have to be implemented, we still are living by those little bits of statutes. Districts can still decide what curriculum to use to teach toward that standard.”
Lashley said Park has and will continue to teach about mental health in class. Park communicates with teachers to make sure the curriculum is being followed.
“(Park) has already been teaching about mental health. There’s a whole unit on mental health with our health teachers. We look at curriculum, we sit down with teachers, we do observations and all of that to make sure that all of those things are taking place,” said Lashley.
According to Oppegaard, the new Minnesota standards will be very beneficial to students. Many students live in households where mental health is not talked about, so she said having a safe space to communicate those feelings will be very helpful.
“It’s really valuable because some people might grow up in households where it’s not commonplace to talk about that. Some people have higher emotional quotients, just in general, that help them understand that. But, for some people, it might be really, really hard to understand their own mental health issues and own emotions. It’s a really valuable life skill to have because it’s really hard to go about your day to day life if you don’t understand your emotions.”
Youakim said there have been two major supreme court cases surrounding students’ freedom of speech: Tinker and Hazelwood. Youkim said the new education bill follows Tinker, allowing students more journalistic freedoms as long as certain standards and practices are followed.
“There used to be an old standard that was set in Supreme Court law called Tinker, and that standard was, your first amendment rights do not stop at the schoolhouse door, but you have to make sure you’re not doing something that’s going to be so disruptive at the school day so school shuts down, or you can’t print slander,” said Youakim. “Fast forward, there was another Supreme Court case called Hazelwood that kind of turned that upside down and gave more power back to the school districts to censor students. This (new education bill) was a good way to strike that balance and get back to more of the fact that (students) should have academic freedom and license to publish. As long as you’re not totally disruptive of the school day and there’s still journalistic standards being taught, districts can’t censor you if these things are met.”
Oppegard said no matter age or job, everyone should have the same legal protections. She said students are put in a sensitive spot if their rights aren’t protected.
“It’s important that regardless of what job you’re in, you have the proper protections. Just because you’re a student journalist or you’re younger, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be given those same legal protections. It puts you in a very vulnerable state if you don’t have protections,” said Oppegaard.
According to Youakim, her main argument for the bill was to allow students to learn in a safe space and access help from advisors in order to learn.
“Adults want the control. My push against that this whole time was, a light bulb switch doesn’t happen the minute you graduate from high school,” said Youakim. “Part of learning is learning how to do things in a safe and controlled environment where you can get guidance.”
