On May 8, 2024 at 4:29 PM, the Grant High School administration addressed Grant students and families in an email titled, “Updated Cell Phone Policy for 24/25 School Year.” Mere minutes after hitting inboxes, it had developed into a widespread controversy, manifesting its way into dinner table conversations, social media platforms and local news publications.
The email explains the ways in which a phone-free environment would provide a better learning experience for students in the upcoming year. It specifically emphasized the importance of class-time engagement, limited distractions and improved academic performance — all of which phones were perceived as a detriment to. The proposed solution to the phone-related issues at Grant: a program called Yondr.
Yondr, a company dedicated to phone-free environments, was founded in 2014 and is used internationally to limit screen usage with the intention of enhancing productivity and creativity.
When Principal James McGee realized that phone use had become a problem amongst Grant students, he started devising plans to enforce control over the issue. During the 2023-24 school year, he implemented a policy that required all students to surrender their devices to a phone caddy that would be out of reach during instructional time. After months of monitoring students’ usage of these caddies, McGee noticed that phone use issues at school could not be contained by a simple caddy.
“Though those first couple of months, there was an improvement, it still wasn’t working,” says McGee. “So, (I) started looking at different options, and Yondr was one of them.”
Through Yondr, every Grant student is provided a lockable fabric pouch that can be opened and closed with the assistance of a magnetic locking device. Students are expected to keep their phone and associated technologies locked and away in a Yondr pouch for the entire school day. At Grant, this locking device will live at the front of the school by the main office and can be utilized at the beginning and end of the day, with some exceptions. McGee also discussed potentially providing a few locking devices to be distributed around the school at the end of the day.
If students fail to comply with Grant’s new phone policy, their device will be surrendered to the office for a parent or guardian to retrieve after 3:30 PM. Additionally, a disciplinary note will be added to the students’ record.
This is a zero tolerance policy; if a phone is seen by an administrator, it will be immediately confiscated and taken to the office. In reference to its rigidity, McGee explains that this policy will not function as loosely as others have in previous years: “At Grant High School you don’t get to pick and choose which rules and policies you’re going to follow.”
While McGee noted that general phone use was impairing students’ academic performance throughout the day, he also mentioned how phones offered an access point to disorderly behavior. These include increasing teachers’ responsibilities, cyberbullying and drug exchanges.
In past years, teachers have been tasked with managing students’ phone use on a period-to-period basis. They are often faced with pushback from students who find ways to avoid using phone caddies. In many cases, teachers spend valuable class time corralling students and reinforcing the rules over and over again. Select teachers have chosen to completely disregard these past policies out of sheer exhaustion from non-compliance.
“Some teachers have been hardcore and others haven’t. And that’s challenging and, quite frankly, it’s unfair to students. The rules should be consistent,” says McGee.
Parents also recognize why teachers taxed with managing students who fail to follow the school guidelines see Yondr as a relief. Beeman Strong, a parent of two Grant students says, “The problem with the current system seems to be that, I think, teachers find it too hard to fight that battle every period.”
When discussing his reasoning for implementing Yondr at Grant, McGee also shined a light on his concerns regarding cyberbullying. He says that a majority of the bullying that has occurred in recent years has been conducted on smartphones. Whether that be spreading unsolicited photos of fellow students, sharing targeted content or spreading rumors on social media, McGee believes that eliminating phones from school all together will relieve this issue significantly.
Additionally, McGee suspects that Yondr will reduce drug usage during school hours. Administration has dealt with multiple instances of drug use and exchanges between students that occur on campus. These exchanges are made possible through communication on smartphones, which McGee trusts will be better contained by the restrictions Yondr will provide.
“The world is changing, and even the drug culture has changed. And it’s so much more dangerous than just five years ago. So doing everything we can to keep our students safe, physically, but also mentally (and) emotionally, is where we’re coming from,” says McGee.
While McGee hopes to see improvement in issues regarding drugs and bullying at Grant, many wonder how this new policy will affect students once they retrieve their phones at the end of the school day.
McGee says, “I was bullied, but when I got home, that was a safe space for me. But that’s not necessarily true for our kids today.” He hopes that Yondr can at least put a temporary bandage on the more widespread phone-related problems that seem to have manifested into the classroom.
A Yondr representative shared with Grant Magazine that the company tends to see a 90-95% compliance rate among its school client bases. While McGee expects many students to follow the directed policy, he acknowledges that there will be some outliers.
There will be exceptions in place for students who require medical accommodations that use their devices as a tool or tracker throughout the day; the Grant administration has already ordered specialized Yondr pouches that don’t lock and feature a mesh design for easier access. With that said, other students plan to opt out in resistance.
An anonymous Grant parent says, “My student and a number of his friends are already figuring out a fake phone.”
For a variety of reasons, students have already devised plans to avoid locking their phones during the school day, either because they were directed to do so by their parents, or simply because they do not want to give up their phones.
Multiple parents have voiced their concerns about communication with their child should an emergency occur. “My absolute biggest fear as a parent is that somebody is going to walk into the school with a gun … I automatically go to ‘worst case scenario,’” says the anonymous parent. “I’m just terrified that we will find out the hard way. What happens in an emergency if everybody’s phone is locked, and there’s no way to undo it?”
While this concern is enough for some parents to direct their child to disobey the policy, others acknowledge this setback while still remaining largely in favor of Yondr. Strong says, “It has downsides. And (emergency response is) certainly one of them. If there was something like that to happen, I wish I could get in touch with my kid right away … (But) I still like the trade off.”
Presentations formally introducing the new Yondr policy will roll out during the first few weeks of the 2024-25 school year. They will cover year-long expectations and last around 10-15 minutes.
While Grant is the first, and so far only, school to implement Yondr within the Portland Public School district, they are behind many schools nationwide that have already explored and enforced this technology.
Certain schools across the country, namely in California, Florida and Indiana, have banned phones altogether. “We’re at the forefront in the Portland area, in the state of Oregon. But if you look at us nationally, we’re not. Some people will say that we’re actually trailing the pack,” says McGee.
Since its introduction, it’s clear from both student and parent reactions that there have been many conflicting thoughts about Yondr and the 2024-25 phone policy. However, McGee stands firm in his belief that Grant will become completely phone-free.
“The goal is to give students a seven-hour rest period from social media and their smartphones,” he says. “I think by doing that, it’s going to enhance the school environment.”
