We'll admit that we're too old to have been tempted with cell phones when we went to school -- the 50 pound, $10 per call models available at the time made that prohibitive. But obviously these days it's harder to find a teen without a phone, and school officials face the issue of what to do about it. All out bans are unpopular because cell phones have been demonstrated to come in handy during emergencies, so schools have a hodgepodge of about where/how the phones can be used, and the type of punishments doled out for violations. One suburban mom found out that her son's school was hard core:
When the school nurse at West Aurora High School recently called to tell Rhonda Darby her 14-year-old son was running a fever and had to be picked up, she said she'd be there as quickly as possible. But Darby, a nurse herself, was with a patient at the time. And because the appointment took longer than expected, she dialed her son's mobile phone to make sure he was OK and tell him she was running late.
And before his phone even reached the end of its Tokio Hotel ring tone, the kid found himself suspended for three days. As the parent of a school age kid ourselves, this Chicagoista has to agree with the writer of the article that an immediate suspension is draconian. Zero tolerance rules for drugs and weapons, maybe (although even those have been taken to ridiculous extremes of aspirin and nail clippers), but cell phones? Send a note home in the kid's backpack and let him get back to class where he belongs. [S-T, image by Mike Kline]
