Phone boxes are empty, but pockets aren’t

By LIAM VENEGAS 
The Tower 

Manteca High administration has noticed that students are wandering around school grounds on their phones, and the classroom cell phone policy is being enforced by many teachers.  

Vice Principal Debi Chavez said she believes it is affecting student performance, while contributing to school drama. 

Students have been caught by campus monitors walking with their phones and seen in the bathrooms using them for most of the class periods. Those same students have struggled in the classroom.  

“Absolutely, it’s becoming an issue”, Chavez said. “It wasn’t at the beginning of the year, and teachers are slowly slacking, students are slowly slacking, by the end of the year we all get a little looser. It’s all loosening up, and we’re seeing a lot more students out now.” 

Chavez estimates that 90 percent of the student body used cell phone lockers at the start of the school year. Today, Chavez believes that the percentage is closer to 50 percent, which has led to an increase in the number of students who are caught wandering around. Chavez said students out of class without purpose is up by 40 percent. 

Chavez also explains how important this state law is to collect the phones, on how we should refine our policy on putting phones. As when students don’t use their phones, it benefits the school.  

“We have seen learning go up so much (and) grades go up so much, because students are focused on learning and not what’s on their devices and texting their friends,” Chavez said. “(We) will be better. Less fights. Less drama, because people aren’t texting during the day: ‘Meet me after school,’ We won’t be doing that.”