New Digital Device Policy for School District 72 Goes into Effect July 1

School District 72 (SD72) has developed an operating procedure to include cell phones and other digital devices in classrooms.

The Ministry of Education and Child Welfare has ordered school districts across the province to create policies regarding the use of digital devices. This policy will go into effect on July 1, 2024.

“The goal and mandate of the ministry was to create more structured learning time in schools and reduce the amount of distractions that were happening in our schools, certainly at the middle and high school level, but maybe even a little bit at the elementary level at times,” Superintendent Geoff Manning said during a June 18 school board meeting. “So the guiding principle of this operating procedure is to really make learning time learning time.”

Manning says this doesn’t mean digital devices like cell phones will never be used in schools. The operating procedure is that they will be allowed during class hours under the supervision of a teacher or on special days when they are used for educational purposes.

The procedure is that elementary school students will not have cell phones at school. This can only be done with permission from a teacher or the school principal/vice principal. Middle school students can bring them to school, but are expected to keep them away from the classroom and not use them during lunch or break. In high school, students can use them during breaks and lunch, but they should also keep them away unless instructed to do so by a teacher during class.

A letter from the school district is to be delivered to the students’ parents. It presents the procedures.

The SD72 Act leaves the rules of conduct and individual consequences to schools.

“We won’t be micromanaging this at the school level, but schools will be developing their own codes of conduct for violations and non-compliance,” Manning says.

Trustee Daryl Hagen raised medical issues like diabetes and wanted to make sure the policy focused more on education rather than teachers becoming the “digital device police.”

“From what I understand, we want to improve the quality of education and this is just one small way in which we can say that we need to take control of this process, and we don’t want to stop what is necessary, but encourage the learning that we think is necessary ” – says. “I don’t know what the address would be, but I hope we don’t have to come up with a whole detailed policy to say, ‘OK, your phone is gone, there will be penalties.’ It just doesn’t seem like a positive learning environment.”

The policy states that the district’s inclusive education department will work with schools to assess health and medical needs to ensure students have access to digital devices if they need them for those purposes.

“The ministry has realized and we have realized that we are taking all of these things into account to make sure that we are building not only a positive environment but also a necessary environment for some of the students who have those needs, so that is on the books in politics,” says Manning. “We have no interest in becoming the mobile police, that’s for sure.”