FORT WORTH, Texas — There’s something noticeably different at Nolan Catholic High School in Fort Worth this year.
It’s not new uniforms or facilities. It’s the absence of something that accounts for what principal Oscar Ortiz calls a remarkable cultural shift.
There are no cellphones in use during the school day.
Students are required to keep them in backpacks inside their lockers.
If students are caught using their phones, the devices are confiscated and must be retrieved by a parent or guardian after a small fine is paid.
To a home-schooling parent like me, this doesn’t seem a novel or even particularly harsh policy.
Aren’t smartphones almost always prohibited in places of learning?
According to federal data, close to 77 percent of schools in the U.S. reportedly ban cellphone use in schools.
But practice looks different than policy.
Before this year, Nolan had a no-cellphone policy in place. But as Ortiz explained, when such policies don’t take into account what that means for teachers in the classroom, they are difficult to enforce and make other rules seem arbitrary.
That isn’t just the case at Nolan.
A friend who has taught at an area public school for nearly a decade laughed when I asked about his experience with cellphones in the classroom.
The school had a policy, he said, but kids were on their phones anyway and there was nothing he could do about it.
“I would teach to the two or three students who actually came to learn,” he said.
Ortiz, though, has seen previous cellphone policies implemented successfully. At Nolan, he wanted to be intentional about “creating a space where children can learn the right way,” free from distraction.
Thus far, this more robust policy seems to be working.
Ortiz estimates the school has minimized cell phone use by 85%-90%.
In the first seven weeks of school, teachers and administrators have collected only 12 devices, compared to last year’s 12-15 a day.
