DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — DeKalb County School Board members unanimously approved a new pilot program on Monday designed to keep kids away from their cellphones at school.
DeKalb County Schools Superintendent Dr. Devon Horton said the district is working to find ways to bring back the interest of school and engagement with students.
"As a school system, we have to be proactive and find ways that are going to help our students be focused and help our teachers to continue to deliver high-quality lessons while also still honoring and respecting parents and students wanting to have access to their phones in some way," Horton stated.
The program will start with Yondr pouches at Salem, Henderson, Sequoyah, Lithonia and Tucker middle schools and Lakeside, Cross Keys, Lithonia, Tucker and Martin Luther King, Jr. high schools.
"Students will power down the phone, enter it into the pouch and then they will actually walk around with it for the full day," Horton said. "The research is showing that as long as they have access and are not fully detached from [their phones], they still are able to balance that a little bit."
Three other schools — Miller Grove, Druid Hills and Chapel Hill middle schools — will test a cellphone locker pilot.
"When you roll out such major initiatives like that, we want to be able to get the kinks out," Horton told 11Alive. "There's opportunity for us to really get feedback from families, from students and from our teachers to see what can we do better?"
Horton said other districts have seen success with similar programs. Parents can still contact their students through the front office for any type of emergency situation.
"What we're seeing in other districts is between 30 to 45 days, that need or just the idea that you can instantly reach your parent or your child kind of fades away," he said. "That's not to say that every student and every parent will get fully on board with that, but we're going to find the time to really work and massage that so that we can get to what's most important."
DeKalb County Public Schools' decision follows at the heels of Marietta City Schools, which also voted unanimously late last month to approve a rule requiring students to use Yondr pouches.