AMESBURY — Amesbury High School has become a phone-free zone for students during the school day, a substantial change for students and educators alike.
In accordance with the school’s bell-to-bell cell phone ban policy enacted this school year, students lock their cellphones in a clear box at the beginning of the day and retrieve them at the end.
Amesbury High School’s policy comes at a time when state lawmakers are attempting to pass legislation to put similar policies in effect statewide. Some Greater Newburyport schools, including Amesbury Middle School, have already enacted bell-to-bell cell phone policies.
Discussion of bell-to-bell cell phone policies at the state level inspired Amesbury educators to draft their own policy ahead of potential state mandates, according to Principal Danielle Ricci.
“We felt like we had an opportunity to get out ahead of the curve, and knowing that the Department of Education will be sending out some guidance on how to implement this policy when it does become law, that we have a window of time where we could try to roll this out and make it our own so that we are not scrambling to do it when this legislation passes,” she said.
During the last year, administrators have been discussing the policy, and last spring they decided to seek student input on the policy from the school’s Student Advisory Council.
As part of that collaborative process, students on the council traveled with AHS staff to nearby Ipswich High School, a school that had already enacted a bell-to-bell cell phone policy.
There, students from the two communities conversed about the policy, with Amesbury High School students posing a number of questions to Ipswich High School students, according to Brooke Woodsom, an Amesbury High School junior and president of the Student Advisory Council.
“Originally, last spring we went out and we got a lot of student opinions on how Ipswich kids, how they liked it and what their views were on it. And, we also asked what they didn’t like about it,” she said.
With that feedback, Advisory Council students helped shape the policy in Amesbury, which recently received support from the state.
Just over two weeks ago, the district received a $15,600 grant from the Attorney General’s Office to support the implementation of the policy.
Amesbury School Superintendent Stephen Zadravec said part of that funding is going toward boxes, and the remainder will likely be used to communicate with the community about the policy in ways that have yet to be finalized.
“It will help support the funding of boxes, but also we want to have a larger community conversation about this. So, we’re talking about, how do we use this as a way of helping get messages out to parents or have communications? or some of the other things that we may want to be advertising or initiating for a broader dialogue to the ‘why’,” he said of the grant.
But regardless of the use of grant funding, the policy is in effect, and Zadravec said it has made a positive impact on students’ school days so far.
“I don’t want to over exaggerate it, but it’s really a healthy thing to see. It’s just a lot more peer-to-peer interaction. And while, of course, we know this is an adjustment, cell phones have become such an integral part of teenager life, it’s an adjustment that has come without the level of backlash that you might think,” he said.
Similarly, Ricci said she has noticed that the school’s cafeteria has become louder as students are interacting with each other more frequently, just one of many positive effects of the ban.
“I’m seeing eyes up in the hallway, and I’m getting a lot more hellos than I might have last year. So, it’s been nice to see the eyes up and the human interaction that we’re seeing in the hallways. And honestly, our students have been wonderful. They’re so responsible, so respectful about it,” she said.
Ricci also attributed a great deal of the policy’s success thus far to the Student Advisory Council, and said many students appreciated knowing their peers were involved with creating the policy.
“I think that’s a huge piece of why it’s been successful so far because through word of mouth, students are hearing that these students were a part of the planning process. So, from a buy-in perspective, that has been really important,” she said.
As for Woodsom, she is glad to have been a part of creating the policy that has positively affected her peers.
“I feel a little proud to know that I’m the reason why these kids’ screen time hours aren’t through the roof anymore, and that people, including myself, are now more focused on their schoolwork. And, at the end of class, if we’re given a couple of extra minutes, instead of scrolling on TikTok, we’re now actually realizing we can do a whole worksheet with this amount of time,” she said.