CT Town Musing Over Phone Ban For Schools

Hmmm...

Gov. Ned Lamont’s suggestion last month towards the end of his annual State of the State address that kids lock away their smartphones during the school day unexpectedly generated a wave of applause that still is resonating.

“I’m getting a lot of feedback, more feedback on this than anything I’ve done in a while,” Lamont said Tuesday on a school tour. “And I think it really has hit a chord with parents and teachers, and the kids are OK with it.”

Lamont, Attorney General William Tong and education Commissioner Charlene M.  Russell-Tucker visited Illing Middle School in Manchester, where school administrators are three months into a smartphone experiment begun before Lamont mused that schools might do well to emulate Beyoncé.

The singer is one of the performing artists who sometimes require phones be locked in Yondr pouches, small neoprene bags that allow patrons to keep their phones but not use them to take calls or make recordings or photographs during performances.

Manchester spent about $30,000 on Yondr pouches, which can be quickly sealed in the morning and opened in the afternoon with magnetic locks, to enforce a ban at Illing on the use of smartphones during the school day.

It’s a pilot program that teachers and students say is producing benefits beyond a greater degree of engagement in class. They say there is less drama, fewer incidents of digital bullying and a restoration of the privacy that eroded when every kid carried a device that could record video and audio.

Going by their Wikipedia page, Yondr doesn't seem to be on the Stock Market. I bring this up because part of the solution revolves using one particular product, meaning that if this catches on and other schools and states follow suit Yondr could stand to make a lot of money. 

Also, there's no mention of "private schools" in this article, so there's that.