Dear Editor:

High school should be a place where students learn responsibility and self-control instead of having their phones taken away. In the real world, people are expected to manage their own devices. Without the opportunity to practice this in school, students miss important preparation for life after graduation.

Yondr pouches also create inconveniences and frustration. Students rely on their phone to communicate with their family as well as for transportation and emergencies. With the Yondr pouches students are now being called to the office to either speak to or get messages from their parents, which involves being pulled from classes and losing valuable in class information. The Yondr pouch makes it more difficult to stay connected.

I believe that we could have the same rules without the pouch. Students who have their phones out during class should get detentions and have their phones taken until the end of the day.

We should be able to have our phones at lunch if we want to, and have them at the end of the day after the last class ends at 2:12. Because we have students who live as far away as Alna and Westport, they get dismissed at 2:15 and the rest of us are required to wait until 2:30 doing nothing but waiting to be dismissed, so why are we not able to use our phones during this time?

I concede that before the Yondr pouches, teachers were forced to be the phone police. I believe this is why teachers had a unanimous vote for the Yondr pouches. I think we’ve learned our lesson from having them this year and we know what the cost is if we abuse the privilege again.

When we have jobs, we will be expected to be able to put our phones away on our own. They aren’t going to get locked up in a pouch.

Instead of relying on Yondr pouches, the school should focus on clear expectations and consistently enforcing phone rules in classrooms. That approach would respect students while limiting distractions.

Royce Rogers

BRHS rising senior