As a national movement to ban cellphones in schools grows and Mt. Ararat High School considers a new policy on the subject, three Harpswell teenagers are raising their hands to say, in effect, a cellphone ban would not address more serious issues. Their big-picture view of the debate might surprise adults.

“I think cellphones are a very easy scapegoat for preexisting problems,” said Morgandy Crawford, a Mt. Ararat sophomore and student senator. “Yes, there are classroom management problems. Yes, the kids are less focused now than ever. But how much of that can be blamed on cellphones or electronics, and how much can be blamed on how society as a whole has shifted, or how parenting styles have shifted?”

“You take a cellphone away from a kid, that’s easy,” Morgandy added. “It’s hard to admit that we need to change some pieces of society to see the change we want.”

Molly Greenleaf, a Mt. Ararat senior, said that taking away her cellphone would compromise her ability to communicate with family for daily living and for protection in crisis.

“Cellphones are not going away,” she said. “In fact, they are probably going to become more and more prevalent in our society. I think it’s better to grow with them than to just kind of send them away as if they don’t exist.”

Molly uses her phone to communicate with her parents about rides. Without access to cellphones, she said, students would have to go through the administration, staff or health center to contact home for them.

“I don’t feel like that second step is necessary when I can directly communicate with my parents or with my (sophomore) sister,” she said.

Molly also is concerned about “the prevalence of gun violence in schools.”

“I want to be able to communicate directly with my parents and law enforcement as quickly as possible,” she said. “I will be graduating, but my younger sister is not, and I want her to be able to access those resources immediately while she’s here.”

Older generations, she said, “really didn’t have to deal with” concerns about school shootings.

“They didn’t have to be afraid to go to school,” Molly said.

A wave of bans

At the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, The New York Times reported that Florida, Indiana, Louisiana and South Carolina had passed laws banning student cellphones from public school classrooms. Pennsylvania and Delaware have adopted lockable bag or pouch systems to eliminate cellphone use in classrooms, while the governors of California and New York directed their legislatures to address the problem.

The local school board, the Maine School Administrative District 75 Board of Directors, is considering a proposal that would not take phones out of students’ hands. Instead, under the plan — now used by Morse High School in Bath — students would secure their cellphones in a special pouch that denies access until the owner has the pouch unlocked at the end of the day. Students would possess their phones throughout the school day, which parents appreciate because of GPS tracking, but they would be unable to use them.

At Morse High School, Principal Eric Varney and two former Mt. Ararat teachers, John Dever and Bree Candland, say the pouch system has had an enormous cultural impact in the classroom and throughout the building.

Dever, a social studies teacher, wondered if he would see “open rebellion” at school and on social media after the system was announced.

The rebellion didn’t happen. The reaction was almost too good to be true, according to Dever, Candland and Varney.

“I was definitely exhausted by the cellphone battle,” Dever said. “But I honestly think the kids were overwhelmed by cellphones. They were getting a constant barrage of interruptions and anxiety about maintaining their Snapchat streaks and ‘Am I getting bullied?’ and ‘I need to keep up.’ I think they were the ones that were overwhelmed.”

Since the introduction of pouches, “their focus is so much better,” he said.

“Now everyone knows what we’re doing, whereas before it was teacher-by-teacher enforcement,” said Candland, also a social studies teacher.

“It’s been a night-and-day change,” she said. “I have unlearned how bad it was in class. I don’t have to think about cellphones at all.”

“And the kids like it,” she said. “Some say, ‘It’s been really good for me.'” Students tell her they use their phones less at home, get more sleep and feel less pressure to be on social media.

“And they talk to each other,” Candland said. “At lunch, instead of sitting there and looking at their phones, they talk! They’re having conversations!”

Varney, the Morse principal, said his walks through the hallways have changed.

“I’ll look at a student and say hello and they say hello back. In fact, some of them say hello first,” he said.

Suspensions have been cut in half, Varney said, and visits to the school’s health center have increased.

Why more visits to the health center? According to Varney, students are no longer texting a parent that they don’t feel well, then getting dismissed after the parent calls the school. With no phone access, many students go to the health center instead.

A frequent result, after a quick checkup, is, “You’re fine. You can go back to class now,” Varney said.

Different school, different result?

The reception from Mt. Ararat students could be different, for better or worse, than the reaction from Morse students, because most Morse students didn’t become aware of the policy change until early last summer. Mt. Ararat students are already talking about next year’s possible change.

Calliope Greenleaf, a sophomore who will be more affected by the change than her graduating sister, is worried about a new world without her phone.

“It helps me keep in contact with my older sister,” Calliope said. “It’s kind of weird not having an electronic device with me. I haven’t lived in a time before where that wasn’t, like, a constant thing. It’s kind of hard to be randomly thrown into having it taken away.”

“When I’m in class, I can see other students on their phone,” she said. “But there’s kind of an agreement not to snitch on anybody.” Teachers don’t seem to notice, she said.

Mt. Ararat High School Principal Christopher Hoffman has been studying the Morse transition as part of his research into the issue. He assembled a task force that included two students alongside administrators, teachers and parents. The group conducted student, parent and faculty surveys before presenting its report to the school board.

Of 338 parents who responded to a survey, 69.8% did not support “unrestricted” student access to cellphones in school. Meanwhile, 98% cited communication with their child as the primary reason they bought their kids cellphones.

Hoffman recently attended a meeting of the Student Senate where the pushback was strong.

“I’m a little nervous about how it’s going to go,” Hoffman said. “Morse students were against it. But they may have figured it out.”

Author and journalist Kenneth Z. Chutchian lives on Harpswell Neck, where he helped Bob Anderson launch the Harpswell Anchor in 1998. He worked for 20 years at newspapers in New England before teaching public high school for 24 years.

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