LAKELAND - Since the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, students across Alberta, including those in the schools across the Lakeland region, have been required to have cellphones and other electronic devices turned off and stored out of sight while in the classroom.
While it did take a few weeks for all students to comply with the provincially-mandated changes, Rick Cusson, the superintendent for Northern Lights Public Schools, said principals at schools in the division in recent weeks have noted a significant decrease in their interactions with students with cellphones. This, in turn, has meant fewer distractions in classrooms and less disciplinary actions that has had to be taken.
“Teachers have definitely reported less distractions in the classroom without cellphones,” Cussontold told Lakeland This Week. “They’ve also been reporting that outside of the first couple of weeks, students are kind of into the routine now.”
Going into the school year, Cusson continued, officials anticipated challenges that could be faced regarding the banning of cellphones in classrooms. Society, he said, is in a place now where kids and parents are very much in tune with using technology to communicate frequently with each other.
“There was some anticipation that there would be some potential challenges with kids and with parents reducing the use, but it’s been going fairly smoothly so far,” he said.
While a ministerial order from Alberta Education highlighting standards for the use of personal devices and social media in schools came into effect on Sept. 1, individual school boards have until Jan. 1, 2025, to design and implement their own official policies and procedures.
According to information from NLPS, these policies must include details on where students will safely store their mobile devices during class time, roles and responsibilities of students, staff and parents in the changes, consequences for non-compliance, and a notification process for changes to the policies.
Cusson said the school division has a committee of principals that is coming together on a regular basis to create the official guidelines that will be implemented prior to the Jan. 1 deadline.
Karen Packard, the chairperson of the NLPS board of trustees, says the board is having discussions internally and with other boards other to determine whether it’s more appropriate to have an administrative procedure in place, to have a policy in place, or to have both.
“It’s really been left to the discretion of school boards to make that choice,” she said.