Hello all. With online learning continuing for most schools in some capacity (our school gives an option for fully remote or a hybrid model of in-person and virtual) I am wondering what your districts are doing about your staff cell phone policies. More and more educators and counselors at school are using their personal phones to contact parents and students (and texting or messaging seems to be increasingly popular way to get a hold of parents and teens). Our polices are very general and really refer more to discouraging use of personal cell phones and using the district computer system. However, we know that our staff will be contacting students that are less engagaed and not doing as well with virual learning (I am a School Social Worker and often the only way I was able to get some students to respond was to text them), as well as contact happening outside of school hours (again, for those students or families where virtual learning is not always happening from 8am-3pm). I want to be able to give guidance to our school staff, as well as offer protection for staff when they choose to use personal cell phones as I see this happening on an increasing basis especially for those students who are fully remote. Any feedback or ideas that your districts are looking at would be much appreciated. Thank you.
Andrea Randle
Replies
Our district has changed it policy for BYOD this year due to the fact that we are short devices in the schools with so many being on loan for remote learning.
In regards to using personal cell phones, I can tell you that we encourage our teachers to make contact with parents through any means necessary. I know many teachers use google voice to make calls as well as many second number apps that are found in the app stores for both platforms of cell phones.
Besides being on the school board here in NW, I also teach in a neighboring district and run a youth soccer program in the four towns that feed into NW. I do use my personal cell to contact parents and I honestly do not have a problem with them having my number. This stems from both my personal beliefs and also the fact that they can find it easily on many of the organizational websites I am involved with. I feel in this current education environment that allowing our faculty to decide for themselves the best way they want to stay in touch with parents is the most prudent thing to do.
I'm not sure I have a great answer to your question but I wanted to bump it up to see if it catches any other attention.
In the past, we have had a "personal device" policy, but that was really dealing with the use of personal devices accessing our school network, which is not what your question seems to connected to.
My concern with personal devices is if they are not blocking their number, then the personal cell phone number can be "out in the community." (We are a small community, where this happens, anyway as so many people know each other, but that is by choice, and not default.) I would recommend "blocking" the number in those cases - although many won't pick up the phone if they don't recognize the number.
You may get a clearer answer if you are able to explain what protections you are looking for (i.e., protection from what?)