Fossil Ridge High School wonders about potential changes after being the only secondary school in Poudre School District that did not enact stricter phone policies for the 2024-2025 school year.
PSD secondary schools tightened phone policies to improve classroom community. Middle schoolers are prohibited from using phones during all school hours, while high schoolers can only use them outside of class. Phones seen during these prohibited times are confiscated.
Fossil did not enact the stricter policy because of the short time frame between the districtwide decision and the start of the school year, said Fossil Assistant Principal Sonja Gedde. Students, teachers and parents wouldn’t have had an opportunity to provide feedback.
“We are often a school that does everything first,” Gedde said. “We intentionally thought that it would be nice to learn what went well and what didn’t go well at other sites.”
If Fossil enacted these new district phone policies, a big concern of junior Liz Hatzis would be the inability to reach out to parents in the rare case of an emergency.
“The safety of public schools is often in jeopardy these days,” Hatzis said. “God forbid I was in a lockdown and couldn’t contact my parents. That would be terrible.”
On the other hand, junior Max Scott wonders what would happen at Fossil if a student refused to give up a phone.
“Many people will probably continue to use their phones in class,” Scott said. “That might become a serious issue when someone has to come physically remove phones from students’ hands.”
Despite Fossil students’ concerns about the potential of future changes, the pushback at other schools within PSD has been much more tame than administrators expected. Fossil Principal Mark Barry described his conversation with Fort Collins High School Principal Jennifer Roth.
“I wondered how many kids were going to be mad, and how many parents were going to call in,” Barry said. “From an administrator perspective, she hasn’t had many complaints or pushback at all.”
Even though Fossil students may assume these policies would not be beneficial, Gedde believes they would be valuable based on her own experiences.
“When I was a teacher, I did not allow students to have phones out in class,” Gedde said. “I think not having phones is really positive for school culture to focus on connection and relationships.”
The tension between teachers and students rising is a current concern of Fossil teacher Tara Rigby. Rigby explains how without phone policies at Fossil, the confiscation of phones feels personal and students are often offended by the teacher taking away their phones.
“At some point, you wonder, how taking away the phones damages the relationship that you’re having with your students,” Rigby said. “I am wondering how things could be different if there was a more universally agreed-upon solution for phone usage.”
