Students talk up plan to lift school cell phone ban

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2003 | 11:25 a.m.

When the dismissal bell rang at 1:16 p.m. Monday, Silverado High School students poured out of the doors, and the cellular phones popped out of the pockets.

"I gotta see who called me," explained 10th grader Sean Cavanaugh, who flashed a tiny silver Nokia telephone in the parking lot of the campus near the Eastern Avenue exit of the Las Vegas Beltway.

There's a statewide ban on possession of cellular phones and pagers on school grounds, and Cavanaugh and thousands of other Clark County students break that rule every school day. That's one of several reasons why members of the Assembly Committee on Education on Monday considered a bill that would overturn the ban.

Some students and parents say the devices are needed for safety.

"I never talk during school," said Silverado freshman Claudia Ramirez, who pays for her own $30-a-month cellular phone service. "But I have to walk home by myself, and I feel safer with the phone."

Parents also say the phones make it easier to reach their children during the day, given that school office staff members are not allowed to relay messages to students.

But Cavanaugh acknowledged another use that bolsters the argument for the ban. Phones capable of text messaging are handy for "talking" to friends during class, Cavanaugh said.

"You can say, 'Hey, what's the answer to No. 3 on the test?' " Cavanaugh said. "It's OK as long as the teacher doesn't know and you don't get caught."

Karyn Wright, director of human resources for the Clark County School District, said she is worried that lifting the ban would allow for more cheating. She said it could compromise safety and order in the schools, too, because students planning disruptive behavior could use text messages to organize and carry out disturbances.

The school district would likely support amending the ban to give individual school districts more leeway in setting their own campus rules, Wright said. But students told lawmakers Monday most teens already carry cellular phones, and the state law should focus not on possession but on use.

Through video teleconferencing Monday, Becker Middle School students at the Sawyer State Office Building in Las Vegas urged lawmakers in Carson City to allow the devices provided they are turned off during school hours.

"It's a safety issue," Kaila Miller, a seventh grader, told members of the Assembly Committee on Education. "The country is on a high terrorist alert. In case a teacher can't get to a phone, one of the students could pull it out and use it."

Students also described needing cellular phones under less dire -- but still difficult -- circumstances. In one incident students were left stranded when a coach unexpectedly canceled practice, and no pay phones were available. Another student explained her mother's work schedule made it difficult to know in advance whether she had a ride home from school or needed to go to her grandmother's house instead.

Enforcement of the ban varies from campus to campus, with most educators favoring a "don't ask, don't tell" approach, students said. Principals said they don't search to see if students have them, but the devices are confiscated if they ring during class.

The statute, however, provides "an absolute prohibition," said Assemblyman David Goldwater, D-Clark County, who introduced the bill to repeal the ban.

"This is not something that's up to the principals or the school districts," Goldwater said. "These kids are uncomfortable knowing they are breaking the law, often at the behest of their parents, who want them to carry phones."

When the ban was signed into law in 1993, pagers were seen as tied to "criminal behavior" such as drug dealing, said Assemblywoman Vonne Chowning, D-Las Vegas, who served on the original committee that drafted the law. Now cell phones are considered not only common but vital in the event of an emergency, Chowning said.

"Take what happened at Columbine," Chowning told the committee Monday. "It's said a lot of lives were saved because students and teachers had cell phones to call for help."

The classroom intrusions of beeping pagers and ringing phones are easily avoided, Chowning said.

Goldwater introduced AB138 at the request of the Becker students, who drafted it as part of a civics project in teacher Traci Kannon's history class.

Goldwater said he suggested the project after visiting Kannon's classroom.

"I gave them a challenge to find something that needed to be changed that would make the world a better place," Goldwater said. "What they came up with is a great project and an excellent example of where there are two legitimate sides to the issue."

Kannon said she did not believe lifting the ban would result in a flood of phone interruptions during instructional hours. Students already know to keep the phones turned off at school or risk having them confiscated, Kannon said.

"My kids don't even pass notes, but that might be because I'm a little bit scarier than your average teacher," Kannon told the committee, as her students giggled in the row behind her.

Barbara Clark, president of the Nevada PTA, also favored lifting the ban, noting that for students living in rural areas, cellular phones have become a necessity.

A subcommittee will meet with the students to review the bill draft and consider the amendments raised during Monday's hearing. The date for the follow-up was not set Monday.