Harlem Public Schools cellphone ban sparks controversy

Harlem Public Schools recently announced that it will be enforcing its policy banning all electronic devices, including cellphones, as well as games, collectable cards and toys of all kinds from campus starting Tuesday of this week, as well as a prohibition against student leaving campus during lunch.

The policy states that items will be confiscated if they are being found used during school to be returned at the end of the day on the first offense, after a week on second offense, at the end of the quarter on the third offense and at end of the year on the fourth.

The announcement of this change was made on the Harlem Public Schools Faeebook page Sunday and has garnered nearly 150 comments since being posted, a plurality of them negative.

While many comments have been supportive of this change, and some regard the change with mixed feelings, the plurality appear to view this change as excessive or misguided, with some calling into question the legality of the school keeping property for these extended periods of time.

Harlem Public Schools Superintendent Arlene Bigby said the enforcement of the policy is, in part, a response to learning loss accrued by students during the pandemic.

“With kids coming back from COVID and missing a lot of school last year and the year before, we decided to go back to basics and teach everybody what our expectations are,” Bigby said.

She said the enforcement plan was developed with help from the student council.

Some comments made about this change connected this it to a potential threat situation at the school last week, calling it an overreaction.

Bigby said while the potential threat last week was made on social media, and the school is planning to host some training for proper social media use, this policy enforcement has nothing to do with last week’s events.

Last week, school staff noticed some troubling use of social media that they thought may present a threat to the school, she said, and she asked the Blaine County Sheriffs and Fort Belknap Police Department for assistance.

After investigating, the former told school staff that the activity was not a threat to the school, but did provide some extra security to the school when they let student go home early that day just to be safe, Bigby said.

Blaine County Sheriff John Colby said the social media activity did feature a threat made against a student, but not the school itself, and response to the threat fell under the jurisdiction of the Fort Belknap Police Department which took care of the issue from there.

Fort Belknap has not responded to requests for details by print deadline this morning.