The bill is like “the old quote about Henry Ford saying you can have any color Model T — as long as it’s black.””

Karen McDaid, Portsmouth School Committee

PORTSMOUTH — Legislation aimed at keeping most public school students from physically accessing their cell phones during the school day does not have the support of the Portsmouth School Committee.

Last week, the committee voted 5-2 against a resolution in support of House Bill 5598, which requires every public school to have a policy regarding the use of personal electronic devices on school grounds.

According to the legislation, the policy “shall include, but not be limited to, a prohibition on physical access to a personal electronic device by students during the school day as defined by the department of education and the commission of elementary and secondary education …”

Exceptions are allowed for special education students, and those with individualized education programs (IEPs) or certain medical needs.

The sponsors of the bill, which include Rep. Susan Donovan of Bristol who represents part of Portsmouth, say cell phones keep students distracted in an environment that should be focused on learning.

The majority of school board members, however, said they favor a local policy that isn’t as restrictive, with high school students being allowed to access their cell phones outside the classroom. According to Emily Copeland, who chairs the school committee, the local Policy Subcommittee is making progress on “a policy that basically says no cell phones at the elementary schools, no cell phone use, period, at the middle school throughout the day. At the high school, no cell phone use in the classroom.”

The vast majority of classrooms at Portsmouth High currently have holders for phones, but they can be accessed in the event of an emergency.

“But, the difference is at the high school … it is allowed under the current policy to use them in the hallways, at lunch,” said Copeland, added she supported the local policy rather than a “one size fits all” rule. However, if the legislation passed and became law, “we’d have to abide by it.”

Committee member Emily Skeehan, who supports the bill, said she believed the measure intended to allow each district to have its own policy. “I think it’s semantics,” she said, adding the bill doesn’t suggest that cell phones are “not on their body.”

Committee member Karen McDaid disagreed, and she interpreted the bill as being even more restrictive than did Copeland.

“I don’t think it’s semantics, actually. It’s saying that districts can establish policies, but all the policies have to remove the phones from students’ possession for the entire school day,” McDaid said. “My problem with the bill is it’s in conflict with the policy we’re in the process of creating that we’ve been working really hard on.” 

She equated the legislation’s directive that every district should develop its own policy to “the old quote about Henry Ford saying you can have any color Model T — as long as it’s black.”

Tara Aboyoun, of Spring Hill Road, said she also believed the bill’s language was too restrictive, and that students should be allowed to have cell phones on them in the event of any emergency.

Sofia Sinclair, of Ethel Drive, said allowing students to have cell phones on them may be a “temptation,” but a policy spelling out the rules needs to be enforced. “They’ll get the hang of it, that they cannot be on their phones at any point during the school day unless there’s an emergency,” she said.

Copeland, McDaid, and committee members Isabelle Kelly, Jack Delehanty and Brett Fox all voted against the resolution in support of the bill. Skeehan and Vice Chair Frederick Faerber III voted in favor of the resolution.

Freedom to read

In other business, the committee voted 6-1 in favor of a resolution that supports the Freedom to Read Act (House Bill 5726), which prohibits the censorship of library materials.

The measure “explicitly protects libraries from legal action” in the event that someone challenges a book title, and it applies to both public and school libraries, said McDaid.

“As an English teacher, one of my greatest joys was getting the right book in the hands of the right kid. Not every book is for every kid,” she said. “In my opinion what this bill does is it really protects the rights of parents to directly control what their child is able to read, of educational professionals to be able to get the books in the hands of the right kids, and of kids to be able to read a range of books, to be able to access books that are appropriate to them at an appropriate time.”

Delehanty was the sole committee member to vote against the resolution.