MANKATO — The Mankato Area Public School board unanimously voted to implement a policy that bans the use of cellphones during instructional time Monday.
The change comes after the school district heard feedback from staff, Supt. Paul Peterson said.
“In listening to teachers and administrators and acknowledging the fact that a mobile device, while it can be very handy and useful, in the academic setting, the word that has just been used for quite sometime now is just distracting,” he said.
While the policy implements the rule about not using cellphones in class for all schools in the districts, grade levels will continue to have their own levels of enforcement during the rest of the school day.
Elementary and middle school students won’t be allowed to use their cellphones for the entirety of the instructional day.
High school students will be able to use their phones during passing time and at lunch.
If a student gets caught using their phone, Peterson said students could first get a reminder to put it away.
If that doesn’t work, he said, consequences could work their way up to parents needing to pick up their students’ phone in the office and having a conference with the school principal or teacher about how to move forward.
“The goal is to always address those things at the lowest possible level,” Peterson said.
Director of Administrative Services John Lustig said during Monday’s board meeting that students will be able to use their phones in case of an emergency or to monitor their health if they use certain apps to do so.
The policy was passed along with 15 other new policies Monday, many of which were changed to align with new state laws.
Among them, the school district will now have Narcan available in all of its schools in the district.
Last school year, Mankato schools implemented Narcan in their secondary schools.
“That is hopefully something that we would never need to use, but making that available, given the fentanyl and opioid challenges that we see in society, what this new policy does is, in the legislative session this past spring, the legislature now mandated that Narcan be available at all schools,” Peterson said.