Harwood looks to go cellphone-free next school year

May 28, 2024 | By Lisa Scagliotti

Update: The meeting on May 29 will be held in the school library.

A graphic shared on the school’s social media and email newsletter announces a meeting this Wednesday, May 29, to discuss new rules around cell phones.

The announcement carries an attention-grabbing message: “Harwood We Are Going Back to 1995” as teachers and administrators at Harwood Union High School look for community input on their plan to go cellphone-free starting next school year.

In an interview last week with the Valley Reporter and Waterbury Roundabout, Harwood Co-Principal Megan McDonough explained that the topic has emerged as teachers and staff have been looking back on the current school year with an eye toward making improvements for next year. “Everything kept coming back to cellphones as we are considering supporting our students in rigorous and robust programming and engaging them actively and creating a community where everyone feels a sense of belonging and connection,” she said. 

School staff have decided they’re ready to move forward with a new approach once students return to school from summer break in late August. The details, however, have yet to be ironed out. 

A “community dialogue” meeting this Wednesday evening, May 29, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in the school library will serve as a way to discuss the topic with parents and guardians, community members and students.

The goal, the principal emphasized, is for students to have fewer distractions and be more fully engaged in their classes and in interacting with each other. Teachers and staff have dug into research, McDonough said, looking at other schools in Vermont, across the U.S., and in other countries where cellphone use has been removed from schools. “The data and research that's coming up for us is all positive,” she said. 

McDonough pointed to the best-selling book published in March, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt who takes a critical look at social media and the prevalence of digital technology including cellphones and their detrimental impact on children and teens’ well-being and mental health. 

Close to home, McDonough said Harwood staff have connected with their counterparts at U-32 High School in East Montpelier where strict limits on cellphones went into effect recently. “The general sentiment from U-32 was ‘we have no regrets,’” McDonough related. “They shared some specific anecdotes with us about connection that was happening with students and engagement in the classroom that was happening for students. That was exciting and appealing.” 

Currently, Harwood Middle School students – and those at Crossett Brook Middle School as well – are allowed to have phones in school as long as they remain in their lockers for the day. At the high school, phones are allowed with few restrictions other than teachers asking students to put them away during classes. But that’s not always the case and not an easy rule to enforce, McDonough said. 

She related a recent moment during a welcome night at Harwood Middle School for incoming seventh graders next fall. An eighth grader shared her “favorite memory of middle school so far” that was “the conections she’s had at lunch because her cell phone is away,” McDonough said. 

The Harwood Community Learning Center is an alternative high school program that operates out of a satellite site on Dowsville Road across from Harwood Union High School. It’s recently started taking a different approach from the main high school regarding phones and so far, it’s working well, McDonough said. 

Students are expected to keep phones in a common area, not with them when they are involved in classes and activities, she said. “It’s been very effective,” McDonough said. 

Harwood administrators and staff are working on details for the high school to be cellphone-free for the 2024-25 school year. File photo by Lisa Scagliotti

So far school staff and administrators have not worked through the myriad of details to address in implementing a new policy for Harwood such as whether phones will be allowed in school but placed somewhere to not be used during the day; if staff will be expected to limit their cellphone use; what consequences may be for breaking the rule; how staff would manage communication between students and parents in the absence of phones; if and how phones might be allowed as tools for school work and communication, etc.

A quick search on Instagram, for example, finds more than 50 Harwood-related accounts that share messaging from the school itself, to individual graduating classes, sports teams, clubs and more. Students post on some of the social media pages frequently. School administration, for example, shared news of Wednesday’s community dialogue on the school’s own Instagram site and classes posted Spirit Week videos on Instagram during last week’s competition. 

“You are naming all of the realities,” McDonough admitted. “It will be challenging at first.”

Based on the transition at the school’s HCLC program on Dowsville Road, McDonough said the hope is that once a new routine is established throughout the school, it will become easy to follow. “Once you transition … you begin to not feel so concerned that you’re missing out on something because everyone else has it away,” she said. 

“We are at the beginning,” McDonough added. “We would love continued opportunities to connect as more is decided. Communication is going to be key.” 

More will be worked out over the summer with the goal of transitioning to a school environment without cellphones when the new school year begins. “Harwood has a beautiful history of collaboration – adult-student partnership,” McDonough said. “This is a decision that the adults are making out of a desire to support our students and create a learning environment that will be a better fit for their success long-term.”