Tam Union school district might issue locking cellphone pouches

The Tamalpais Union High School District might institute a new layer of cellphone restrictions early next year in the form of locking cellphone pouches.

That depends, however, on the results of the district’s $289 million Measure B bond proposal on the Nov. 5 ballot.

Superintendent Tara Taupier told trustees on Tuesday that the district would take preliminary steps in the coming weeks to inform staff, students and parents about plans for using Yondr pouches starting in January. Yondr, a Bay Area company, gave a presentation to the board earlier this month.

The trustees have not voted on a contract with Yondr. Taupier said the cost estimate is $137,000 to buy the $30 pouches for an estimated 4,563 students.

“We would not put through a purchase order until after Nov. 5,” Taupier said Wednesday. “The board said they would not want to commit any money prior to knowing the outcome of the bond.”

Measure B has been scaled down twice since March, when the original $517 million Measure A failed by 564 votes to meet the 55% approval threshold. Officials have said approval is crucial for improving school safety, completing required maintenance and upgrading building codes on the district’s 100-year-old and 60-year-old buildings.

If the measure does not pass in November, the district would have to pull money for the required safety and maintenance upgrades from its general fund budget. Withdrawals from the general fund, which is not normally supposed to pay for facilities upgrades, would result in massive budget cuts in staff, programs and operations, officials have said.

While cellphone pouches might not seem a priority expenditure, they would fortify the district’s existing cellphone policy. Since January, all district teachers have been required to collect cellphones at the beginning of each class. Students get them back after classes and during lunch or other breaks.

With the Yondr product, students would be required to lock their phones in the pouches at the beginning of the first class of the day. A machine would be installed in each classroom to do the locking.

Students would then use a similar machine to unlock their pouches at the end of the day. Teachers would not need to collect the phones and students would keep the locked-up phones in their backpacks all day.

The idea is that cellphones not only would be banned during classes, but also would be unavailable during lunches or in the hallways during breaks.

“There is clear data that cellphones are isolating kids,” trustee Cynthia Roenisch said at Tuesday’s meeting. “This can only benefit students.”

Roenisch cited a June 12 article in the Pitch, the student newspaper at Archie Williams High School in San Anselmo. The article documents several positive changes at the high school since January, when teachers began collecting the cellphones during classes.

“Kids were playing Hacky Sack during breaks,” Roenisch said.

The article quoted Tim Parnow, a physical education teacher at the school, as saying student engagement has increased in the months since the cellphones were banned during classes.

“Even towards the end of the period, when we get through whatever it was we were teaching, kids don’t sit down and go on their phones; they will continue playing and talk to other people,” Parnow told the Pitch editor-in-chief, Luca Roy, who wrote the article.

Several Tam Union students had mixed reactions to the pouches during the public comment period of the board meeting.

Odin Palin, a Redwood High School student, said the classroom restrictions made sense, but the ban on cellphones during lunch and breaks did not.

“Outside of class, kids use cellphones to communicate with friends,” he said. “This goes too far.”

William Reilly, also a Redwood student, agreed with Palin, asking trustees if there could be an exception to unlock the pouches at lunch.

Board president Leslie Harlander said the district is still drawing up protocols for the pouches in the event they are purchased.

“We will be getting more feedback from students and parents,” she said.

Student Liam Doombos cautioned trustees that the locks on Yondr pouches are “extremely easy to pick.”

“There are already tutorials on the internet about how to do it,” Doombos said.

Taupier said students who are picking at the locks might be disciplined according to school policies.

“Just like now, if a student takes out a phone during class times, they get to meet with the consequences,” she said.

Taupier said the district’s discipline policy “starts with a conference with the student and a guardian and progresses up through suspension for repeated offenses.”