On Tuesday night, the Board of Education held a listening session. The topic was a proposed “bell to bell” smartphone ban at Staples High School. Several speakers referenced the “Ok to Delay” group.
A Staples parent, who has spent many years serving on PTAs and other youth-oriented boards, is concerned with the tone that group has tken.
She worries that the movement will impact her younger children if her family does not join in, which is why she asked for anonymity. She writes:
The name and educational mission attached to “OK to Delay” is innocuous. It implies that it is “OK” to delay your young children’s technology and social media use.
“OK” in our vernacular typically connotes a personal choice. As an educational resource for parents navigating a technologically advanced society, this mission is admirable. It is supported by many elementary and middle school parents, even those with older teens.
Highlighting the pros and cons, the realities and myths is useful, in light of many findings about technology, and children’s health and safety.
The mission of this organization, based on its own literature and website, is to “protect middle school from smartphones and social media.”
Since Ok to Delay could not achieve its goals at our already phone-free middle schools, the group decided to lobby at the high school level.
Staples parents are typically represented by our PTA, whose executive board made a unanimous recommendation against a bell-to-bell ban at Staples. They cited many valid reasons, which have already been covered on “06880.”
Rather than stating to the high school parents who approached them that the high school is outside of their purview, and that they defer to our own parent organization on this issue, Ok to Delay opted to help wage a battle against the Staples PTA.
Staples High School. (Drone photo/Brandon Malin)
Where has this battle occurred? Ironically, on social media.
Ok to Delay has begun, through its Instagram campaign and anonymous online petition, to label the Staples students as having a crisis they are trying to help solve.
Even their recent Instagram post encouraging parents to come to the townwide meeting to discuss the topic is filled with false impressions of Staples students.
“Want to see our Staples (or future Staples) students focused on learning and socializing while in school. Us too!” As opposed to what?
Staples has a phone-free classroom policy. With some exceptions when teachers do not enforce the ban, Staples students are inside their classrooms learning.
What do Staples students do at lunch or during free periods? They socialize.
“Want to utilize the school day as an opportunity to have 8 less hours of social media and screen time?” This statement is meant to provoke.
It is not, like many things in our time of disinformation, an accurate picture of who the Staples students are.
They do not lack for learning time. And they are certainly not inside their high school for 8 hours glued to social media; they know they don’t have the time.
Staples High School high honors graduates, with principal Stafford Thomas (far right) and vice principal Pat Micinilio (far left).
Is it perfect at Staples? The PTA has stated very clearly there are ways to improve upon the current policy.
Superintendent Scarice let the pot boil over. Without decisive action on his own proposed phone ban, he has opened the door to activism and antagonization.
Worst of all, he has let Staples students be labeled as something they are not.
They are hard workers. They are learners. They are achievers. They apply to esteemed colleges. They win academic honors. They compete for state athletic titles. They put on tremendous musical performances.
They are your babysitters. They are your lifeguards. They work downtown. They are your interns. They pick up your Christmas trees. They bring innumerable hours of community service to our town. via SLOBs and the National Charity League.
They help our elderly and our underserved. They fill our food pantries. They work your birthday parties and your summer sports camps. They are your children’s friends’ siblings.
They aren’t social media addicted zombies. Their phones support many of these pursuits, academic and job-related. Their mental health, according to our own data, is improving.
Staples High School baseball players are role models for younger children …
They drive past your signs and know they are being judged.
And they know that suddenly, through all their work at Staples to become technologically responsible near-adults on the verge of the real world, that their families have prepared them for, our town and many residents within it have suddenly labeled them a “problem.”
High school is hard enough in 2025, without the labeling from other adults.
Be careful with our children, OK to Delay. Don’t create a false narrative about the Staples students to serve your purposes. Don’t stereotype them to get your way.
… and entertain. Staples Players’ spring production was “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.” (Photo/Kerry Long)
Educate; don’t agitate.
Consensus is not possible on this issue. The ban very well may take hold.
But caricaturing our kids in your campaign is not far off from the ills of social media you seek to protect your own kids from.
The Staples community must work together to solve the real, not globalized, issues within the high school.
(“06880” Opinion pages are open to all. To submit a piece, email 06880blog@gmail.com)
As a member of OK to Delay and .knowing many parents in that group. We are all non-judgemental towards parents with other opinions. Most of all we feel nothing but supportive and caring for the high schoolers. None of us have ANY negative feelings about how they are as people or how much they may or may not be on social media. However, we see how much kids are affected by exposure to media (before even being able to get access to social media). All we want is for kids to have less temptation to use the phones, because WE would love to use our phones less and see how much having them accessible affects even us.
I would hope we would look beyond anyone’s choice on how we show our support for our kids. No one wanted a “fight” but a chance to voice an opinion.
If banning cellphones in schools becomes a state law, you won’t have a choice. Jack Backiel
No one should have the right to take my kids phone away from them except for ME! OK TO DELAY: Don’t make YOUR kids problem into MY kids problem. If your kids are having problems with social media addiction, maybe you should parent them differently. But you have no right to parent MY children… who do NOT have mental health problems, social media addiction or whatever other problems you associate with access to their phones. My kids are respectful of their teachers and the in-class policies. My kids are high performing students and are skilled and passionate about their extra-curricular activities. They should not be dragged down to the lowest-common denominator of kids who cannot handle personal time management yet. Staples students and burgeoning adults deserve more respect than being treated like toddlers who can’t resist eating the cookie when told not to.
I think we found the first westport mom who should leave social media. But in true westport fashion, it’s all about ‘MY”
Enough about all of you, let me tell you about me and my over achieving children.
Monica, Are there any other objects that belong to your kids that they can’t take to school?
Ouch.
Homeschooling may be your best option, because then no one but you is telling them what to do. The schools have to operate in a manner that considers a whole lot more than your kids or your parenting style.
Research consistently shows that smartphones in the school environment significantly reduce students’ attention spans and educational outcomes. Whether phones are in use or not, the presence creates an unconscious draw which causes distraction and undermines student’s ability to engage and focus.
There is a reason New York State just banned phones in schools as have other states in the US. Countries in Europe (France, Finland, and Spain and other countries around the world) have strict laws regarding phones for children and specifically in the educational environment.
There is a reason the surgeon general has made such strong statements about smartphone usage and children – the impact usage has on their brain health and mental health.. In 2023 he advised that school environments should be phone free.
Why is there such pushback on an issue that is so clearly defined by science and medical experts? Multiple studies show that excessive smartphone and social media use correlates with increased rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide among teens.
The evidence is clear. The science is clear.
Bell to bell phone ban.
I’m speaking only about the high school. I’m concerned that we’ve all lost sight of the problem being solved — which I thought was that high school teachers felt that phones were disruptive in the high school classroom. That has snowballed into a far reaching debate about child psychology, societal norms, physical safety, and more.
If the initial problem is as I stated and having teachers police phone use is not working, then I agree a formal classroom ban with appropriate consequences is necessary. All students get to suffer the consequences for the actions of some. That’s the story of high school life.
If we are trying to solve the much larger problems of phone addiction, the dangers of social media, e-bullying, increasing occurrences of ADHD, depression, and anxiety, etc., a bell to bell ban is a tactical action that is unlikely to make a dent in the problem. The solution has to start at an earlier age and involves educating parents and teachers on phone management strategies, changing the nature of and access to social media, improving and using parental controls, and so much more. Simply taking the phones out of the equation only increases the anxiety, and forces students to become more resourceful to find ways to get access.
My experience has been that when you take away something that people desire, you often only increase that desire – like when your parents tell you not to date that special person. Can you simply turn off those feelings?
If a particular child has an actual phone addiction, then that is something the parents, therapists, and teachers need to confront. That child will need to learn to operate in a world filled with phones — it’s unreasonable to attempt to create a phone free environment for the benefit of that child.
Fascinating watch, I hope all Staples parents chime in. This is classic fox guarding the hen house.
Best part of Rory’s winning Masters putt was that there were zero phones. Everyone was present.
How many of you adults have videos of the Compo fireworks.
It’s an addiction. Asking addicts to quit is a fools errand. Ban the phones, we all survived before they existed and we’ve all become slaves since then.
As a former Westporter, and someone married to a life-long educator, I’m always impressed by the level of discourse around difficult issues like this one. In general, the data on social media seems clear. Does that apply equally to Staples? Maybe not. I’m glad that I’m not in the middle of this fight.
I think the argument here is that having a phone at school does not equate to being addicted to social media and the onus is on our community to stop pathologizing people’s teens solely on the basis of them being phone owners and users. Just like adults, teens use phones for many things. They must learn reasonable use just like learning to drive. Mr. Scarice could have long ago made a decision that avoided a toxic battle, complete with labels for other people’s kids. No parent in their right mind is arguing for more social media at school; probably not outside of school either. They are stating that just like adults, teens use phones in many ways, often responsibly. And they don’t like being labeled. As no one does. The argument needs to be about the location of the phones and the real consequences Staples can achieve for violations, not about the health status of people’s kids. Same as we don’t label kids for their vaccine histories or any other polarizing topic. Mr Scarice needs to make a choice and own it. Ideally this would not have happened in the middle of the most intense study period of the year at Staples. A real distraction!
I could see the phones being a discretion, in which they are placed in a slip on the back of a door labeled by number.
What worries me is in the event of an emergency, or a student having a phone needed nearby for means of communication dealing with sensitive personal matters outside of school (sick family member, surgery, etc.)
We have to take into account that some days cannot be missed and that students cannot be in two places at once.
Our high school students, young adults, definitely shown in numbers their scholastic growth, dedication and aptitude to learning.
There’s a happy medium here that can be found!
Andrew. Last year my daughter was sick in a high school bathroom. She was so dizzy she could not get up and she was the only person in it. She used her phone to text a friend to help get her to the nurse’s office. This reply is precisely why many parents and kids filled out their surveys with a similar sentiment.
Theres a safety and privacy/personal matter here that needs to be respected here.
I am concerned that there’s also horrible reception/service where in the event of an emergency you cannot call out, especially on the athletic fields.
Again, has to be some sort of happy medium here.
Gery – you and I don’t know one another, but are probably of a similar vintage.
When I attended school, if there was an emergency, there was no problem for the school getting in touch with parents or vice versa. I’m not sure why cell phones are suddenly a vital safety “tool” when we got along fine without them in the past.
While I don’t have a dog in the fight, I am sympathetic to the idea that cell phone’s presence in the schools is, by definition, a distraction.
Monica Ryan’s comment represents the problem. “If I am comfortable with my child being a distraction in the classroom, screw everyone else.” WTF?
When I was on RTM twenty years ago, we would often have issues in which my constituents expressed no opinions to me. These were sometimes heated, but my district neighbors often didn’t make a peep.
YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS, but I often found that the easiest way to decide where to take a position was to think, “who is blowing the most smoke up my ass.” While I certainly don’t think you are doing that, with your thoughtful comment, I am getting way more of the “smoke alarm” going off from those who want to keep phones in their kids hands than from those who are trying to remove a disruption from the schools.
I personally find that the phones are less “vital communication devices” on a school campus, and more “distracting handheld devices” more akin to (dating myself) iPads, Walkmans, and electric football games.
Hah. Chris, this is probably true. I did love my Walkman. I don’t disagree phones can be a distraction (but also learning tools), although they are supposed to check them in and most do. I think every parent at Staples is not only a phone user, but a reader of media (or even a licensed healthcare professional) and able to decipher all the articles available on the topic of cell phones and their kids. They don’t need community help understanding the issue. Many have 20-something adults! Some feel one way, others feel another way. Some say distraction, others say tool of reality. I think that at the RTM you were typically working with your core constituents – the people of Westport. The meeting referenced (I wasn’t there) was not a meeting of core constituents e.g. parents of high school students, or high school students themselves. Most parents were not high school parents, but lobbying on high school policy – and this apparently came with a lot of value judgements and pathologizing, from reports of those in attendance. Ok to Delay seems to imply that it’s OK to make your own family decision on phones – but only if the decision matches theirs! (Also, I believe the guidelines on Smartphones is 13. Every student at Staples exceeds that age.) Parents, in my experience, never respond well to “you’re raising your kids to have issues.” I worked for years as a pediatric nurse and never operated that way. And kids definitely don’t respond well to adults who barely know them telling them what mental health issues they have. You notice the pediatric community here has not issued an outcry about a mental health crisis. (Mine actually told me it was inappropriate to take agency from teenagers, a core developmental milestone.) The policy could easily have just been made, cut and dry, without the opportunity for the community to issue a value judgement. The Superintendent would have been better off making his decision decisively for people to live with, rather than trying to rally support for a controversial topic. It’s not an issue that will create unanimous feelings and it has turned into the Salem Witch Trial for the digital age. The point I take away here is mainly that the Staples kids, who are part of the fabric of our community and people’s children, do not deserve that. A responsible educational leader would not have allowed that.
My step daughter once told me that she would cross her college campus holding her cell phone to her ear pretending to talking to someone so as NOT to appear to ALL ALONE. Cell phones have become an element of socialization rather than communication and/or education. And IMO doing a rotten job at that. Staples’ kids are spending two hours a day on their device during school. Too much. BAN THE DAMN THINGS.
Happiness is inter-connectivity. Jack Backiel
That’s a smart safety thing many college girls do so they’re not an isolated target. They also track each other with a variety of apps in case someone “disappears” from a party, etc.
Phones aren’t all evil, your example proves that.
Nah, I wish David. By her own admission she did it to appear that she was not alone in life. Considering she was A&F model and university swim team standout, not sure why? But we got her some help. The first piece of therapy was get rid of the cell phone for a month then taper off using it for only certain functions.
What is the purpose of divulging tyecpersonal information/background of your stepdaughter?
Everyone knows you make it well known who JO ANN is.
Because my step daughter is not alone and perhaps a parent hearing of this habit might learn something and do something regarding a similar trait with their child. Indeed, living here 40 years, “everybody knows my name.” Funny I have never heard of you.
Here’s a good read. This guy has an interesting take on digital distraction:
https://jeffwozer.com/speaking/
So many in the audience here are quick to point out that we went to school without devices and did “just fine,” but are just as quick to overlook that the world is much different from when we were in high school. I started HS in the 80s, the world was slower, academics and athletics were important but not as high stakes as it is now. Almost all my activities were at the school and could catch a public bus home from my school if I stayed late or was off schedule. (I grew up in an area and era where kids could bring their shotgun in their truck and go hunting afterwards.) All this to say, WE LIVE IN DIFFERENT TIMES!
If the school does ban mobile devices, they need to ensure that there are available phones for the kids to call us and communicate. (Desk phones in offices are gatekeeped scarce resources – this isn’t the option.)
I also know plenty of kids now use Google Voice, Apple iMessage, Signal, and WhatsApp on their laptops as well. I’m not sure if these folks understand they are just pushing very resourceful and creative ways for kids to discover workarounds.
Instead of targeting technology, change the behavior with an enforceable code of conduct that is tailored to the actions and activities you want to change during the school day.
Indeed, Ms. Thibault, we do live in different times. A period where technology is taking over our human skills of interaction, communication and pure manners. Most teenagers spend 90% of their time in their room and read NINE pages of print a day. Boys do not know how to ask a gal out for a date. Lord. To me that is not a winning solution to maturation and education. Plan B, please.