Nixa High School’s new cell phone policy reflects the school’s approach to minimizing distractions in the classroom.
“Teachers were starting to complain about it and wanted to do something,” Dr. David Kelly, principal of NHS, said. “That’s what started the conversation of, ‘How can we go about doing this?’”
With more requests from teachers, the topic of a policy change was discussed in a Guiding Coalition meeting. The Guiding Coalition is a group of NHS teacher leaders who come together —every three weeks— to figure out how to improve the school.
“[The] Guiding Coalition had a conversation about what we would like the policy to look like,” Kelly said. “We looked at several different handbooks from schools… and we found Ladue High School and we liked their policy.”
Administrators presented the idea of a phone policy to a couple students who agreed that the change may be beneficial for the student body. The policy was then written into the high school handbook for 2024-2025.
Last May, the school board did their first read through of the handbook which included the new cell phone policy.
“The idea was brought to the board by the administrators of the high school as part of the student handbook,” Joshua Roberts, president of the school board said. “The removal of cell phones from the students’ immediate possession during class time serves the goal of reinforcing attention to learning while simultaneously reducing the negative outside influences.”
In June, the policy was officially passed.
“At this point, if things continue the way they are, then I don’t foresee any major changes to [the policy],” Kelly said.