The National Guard won’t be coming to Brockton High School to address “disturbing” student behavior, but students will be required to lock up their cellphones in a special pouch when they arrive for class each day.
While details on when exactly the new policy — essentially a ban on cellphones — will go into effect still need to be ironed out, the School Committee wants it to begin as soon as possible.
Each student will be responsible for bringing their pouch to school every day and placing their phones, powered down, inside them before classes start. To unlock the pouches at the end of the day, students will need to tap them on a special device. Earbuds will also be required to be placed in the pouches.
If a student violates the policy, the pouch and phone will be sent to the school’s main office.
A majority of teachers provided favorable feedback, but officials received some concerns around enforcing consequences when students violate the policy, said Michele Conners, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning.
The rollout still needs to be worked out, Conners told the School Committee last Tuesday, and implementation will be gradual instead of fully at once.
“Everything, everywhere, all at once is not going to work,” she said, “and you set up very adversarial conditions between adults and students. And we don’t want that so it needs to be very deliberate — you go slow to go fast.”
Massachusetts’ largest high school, which enrolls 3,586 students, has become the epicenter of student violence and substance abuse, with Brockton grappling with a massive budget deficit that could reach $25 million by the end of the year and has created a severe staffing shortage.
The chaos prompted four members of the School Committee to request the National Guard to be deployed to combat the chaos, but Mayor Robert Sullivan and Gov. Maura Healey both opposed the measure.
Acting Superintendent James Cobbs said the district will be receiving a $10 dollar discount per pouch from Yondr — a San Francisco-based company that creates the magnetic, lockable phone cases — putting the price at $30 per student.
The district will be buying 3,700 devices leading to a total of $99,680, he said.
Roughly 50 schools across the Bay State are using Yondr including Newton, Lowell, Salem, Lee, Springfield, Chicopee and Holyoke.
“I look at it as we roll this out, we work out the kinks and see what happens with faculty and everyone,” School Committee Vice Chairwoman Kathleen Ehlers said. “If it’s working, great. If it’s not then we evolve and adjust again.”