In an interview alongside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy that aired Sunday, Gov. Ned Lamont told NBC 4 New York’s David Ushery that he believes the bulk of classrooms in the state will be phone-free this school year in response to a question about whether a statewide smartphone ban was in the cards for Connecticut schools.
Lamont told Ushery that “education is local” but that he is “going to go right to the superintendents” to encourage districts to “get those phones out of the classroom.”
After announcing his support for phone-free school policies in his 2024 State of the State Address, Lamont proposed legislation that would have required the Connecticut State Department of Education to produce a model policy for cell phone use in schools. That provision did not make it into the legislature’s final bill, but David Bednarz, a spokesperson for Lamont, said the governor directed the department to draft guidance anyway.
Bednarz told the Courant in an email Monday that CSDE Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker is collaborating with the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education to draft the model, which is slated for a vote by the State Board of Education at their Aug. 21 meeting.
In an email to the Courant Monday, CSDE Chief of Staff Laura Stefon said the model policy is still in draft stages and the department is not “prepared to make any public comments on the substance of the guidance yet.” However, Stefon added that the guidance will generally include “personal technology use in schools, as well as student mental health and the impact of social media on students and the classroom.”
In the NBC 4 New York Interview, Lamont, Hochul and Murphy spoke about how their states are responding to concerns about smartphone technology and social media’s impact on student learning and mental health.
Lamont said he started to see youth smartphone use as a serious problem during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lamont said the defining moment was when the calls coming into the state’s emergency operations center shifted from individuals concerned about their own survival to children struggling with isolation.
“For the first three months, it was … am I going to live? But then we started hearing more and more from the kids. They were alone, they were isolated, and they felt so lonely,” Lamont said.
“Smartphones make you stupid, they isolate you, and that’s really accented a lot of that sense of profound loneliness that came out of COVID,” Lamont added later in the interview.
Lamont told Ushery that students are welcoming and “asking for” phone restrictions in schools.
“When it comes to the smartphone, there’s little objection early on. Within two weeks, they’re pretty comfortable talking to each other, not the phone,” Lamont said.
According to a document Bednarz shared with the Courant, the governor’s office is aware of 10 districts that have already implemented or intend to explore policies that restrict phone use in the classroom.
According to the governor’s office, Manchester, Torrington, Brookfield and Hartford have adopted the use of phone locking systems, such as the Yondr pouch, or designated cell phone holder areas where students place their devices at the start of class.
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