Calvert County’s student board member has put a date on a conversation about the school system’s cell phone rules: a virtual policy forum at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19, about six weeks from now.
The student member, listed on the district’s website as Ollie Reist, announced the date during board comments at the Calvert County Board of Education’s October meeting, after raising the idea at the previous two meetings. More information will be published as the date approaches, the student member said, along with a hope for strong student involvement.
A board member asked where the forum would be held. The answer: online. The student member said students had told them that traveling to forum locations in the past was difficult, so the student member will host the session virtually. If student attendance is very high, the plan is to set up breakout rooms led by other student leaders the student member knows.
The forum lands in the middle of a new and still-settling policy. Maryland’s phone-free schools law, HB 525, covers the entire academic school day, from first bell to last, including lunch and passing periods, and it requires local boards to engage families in developing and publicizing their policies. Calvert’s board adopted its bell-to-bell version in August, and the superintendent told the board in September that compliance had been far beyond what many expected.
Not every student is on board. A 16-year-old Maryland student’s petition asking lawmakers to allow phone access during lunch and other breaks had drawn nearly 9,600 signatures when the Chronicle last reported. At that September meeting, the student board member said concerns about the phone policy’s implementation, along with other new school-level restrictions, had come up repeatedly in conversations with students since the school year began. A forum run by a fellow student is one way for that feedback to reach the board directly.
The role fits the assignment. According to the district, Calvert’s student member of the board is officially a non-voting member who may cast a symbolic vote, and is charged with carrying information between the board and students and gathering a range of student viewpoints. In the same October report, the student member described meetings with the Northern High School principal about bathroom procedures, contact with the advocacy group Strong Schools Maryland and attendance at the Maryland Association of Student Councils issues webinar, and said a visit to Northern Middle School was being scheduled for the following week.
No registration link, meeting platform or format for collecting feedback was announced, and board members did not say at the meeting how input from the forum would be used. The Maryland State Board of Education is also expected to adopt additional regulations this winter on what counts as acceptable device storage and access, so what students say in November may arrive just as the rules are being refined.
The same October meeting also produced a plan to protect the high school swim season after the Hall Aquatic Center’s delay, word that the district is merging its strategic, Blueprint and efficiency plans, and a $2.36 million federal grant for the Mary D. Harrison Cultural Arts Center.
