New policy bans cell phones at Brockton High. All students will need to lock up devices.

BROCKTON ― At the start of the next school year, all Brockton High School students will be required to lock up their cell phones inside Yondr pouches upon entering the school. The pouches will remain locked but on their person, in a locker or a backpack. The pouches will only be unlocked at the end of the school day.

This new mandate comes after much debate and discussion on the issue and after several versions of the cell phone policy.

The incoming policy is a stricter and wider-reaching version of the school district’s current cell phone policy, which only requires students to lock their phones away upon their third violation.

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Yondr pouches, which are the critical component of the district’s current cell phone policy that was first enacted in August, arrived at Brockton Public Schools this week. The School Committee voted on March 5 to accept the new cell phone policy for next school year that would require all students to secure their devices in a Yondr pouch.

Yondr representatives will begin training Brockton High staff Thursday to prepare teachers and administrators for the program.

The School Committee agreed to wait until the fall to introduce the Yondr pouch program instead of rushing to introduce them in the remaining months of this school year. Yondr representatives, BPS Acting Superintendent James Cobbs, BHS Principal Kevin McCaskill and members the BPS teachers union all recommended that Brockton schools take more time to properly train staff on the cell phone policy before bringing the pouches into the buildings.

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What’s the new cell phone policy?

In the beginning of February, Cobbs and his team drafted a new cell phone policy that would require all BHS students to lock their phones in a Yondr pouch when they entered the school building. Cell phones, headphones and other electronics will stay with each student in the locked bag until they leave at the end of the day.

Officials from Yondr said they still need to determine exactly how many locking devices will be placed throughout Brockton High School. Each locking device can unlock up to 40 pouches.

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"Every student is assigned a pouch, kind of like a textbook, for the year," said Graham Dugoni, founder of Yondr, at the April 9 school committee meeting. "Inside the school day, every student has possession of their devices, which is very important. So, they can have it in their locker, their backpack, on their person, but they're physically unable to access it."

BPS staff and faculty were able to provide feedback on the policy, and 88 staff members responded. Michele Conners, BPS assistant superintendent of teaching and learning for grades 6-12, said the faculty feedback was "overwhelmingly positive."

The School Committee voted on Feb. 5 to approve the policy and it will go into effect starting next school year.

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What about safety concerns?

In July, the school committee proposed a similar cell phone policy for the 2023-2024 school year, but BPS parents and students pushed back against the proposal, expressing outrage and concern over the potential safety and security threat.

Many parents said at a public forum over the summer that if an emergency broke out at Brockton High, where students have brought weapons in and violent fights were rampant but now are on the decline, they wouldn't feel safe if they couldn't immediately contact their kids.

But countless teachers and staff have said since November that students are constantly on their phones during class and use social media to plan and advertise fights in school hallways.

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"I think it's a monumental thing to implement this cell phone policy. It's never been done at Brockton High," said School Committee member Judy Sullivan. "This is going to affect many students and many families that have never seen this kind of policy before."

This article originally appeared on The Enterprise: Brockton's new school cell phone policy sees Yondr bags for all kids