It’s been a year since Lincoln Public Schools (LPS) updated their rules on student electronic device usage and began piloting digital hall passes, both of which have been a huge success.
At the start of the 2023-24 school year, LPS decided to go district wide with new cell phone guidelines. At the middle school level, cell phones are to be powered off and out of sight throughout the school day (8AM to 3PM). High school students are to leave phones off during class time, but may use them between classes and during lunch.
Additionally, a digital hall pass system was implemented at all LPS high schools and piloted by two middle schools. Each student can request three hall passes per day via their school-provided laptops. Teachers are able to approve these requests electronically, limiting classroom disruptions.
As this week spelled the end of summer break for K-12 students across Lincoln, KLIN News spoke with the Principal of Irving Middle School Rachael Kluck-Spann, who had only good things to say about these two recent policy changes.
“It has really impacted our building culture and our students’ focus on academics,” said Kluck-Spann. “Students are not on devices when they’re at lunch or recess, in the hallways, or even in class. They’re engaged in discussion. They’re engaged in writing. They’re engaged in whatever it is the teacher is having them do.”
The district wide implementation of these new guidelines was also appreciated by LPS staff, as many students transfer among schools during the year.
Irving was one of the piloting middle schools for the new digital hall pass program, which was expanded to all LPS middle schools for the 2024-25 school year.
“We just love it,” Kluck-Spann put it simply. “It’s been really great for our school… before, students had to raise their hand and ask if they could leave the classroom, and teachers would have to disrupt instruction, as well as monitor the number of students that leave class at any given time… and kids are kids, so sometimes they may not really need to go to the restroom, but want a way to avoid class or just take a break.”
The system is set up so no more than 2% of the entire student population can be utilizing a digital hall pass at any given time. Students cannot utilize these passes during the first 10 minutes and last 10 minutes of class.
“When the teacher sees that a restroom is ‘green,’ that means the location the students wants to go to is open. The student then leaves. When they return, they end their pass. So very little instructional time is lost,” Kluck-Spann explained.
Of course, Kluck-Spann made clear, teachers still exercise professional judgement when a student may be in an emergency and needs to leave the class room.
The benefits of these policy changes bear out in the data, according to Kluck-Spann. In the Spring 2024 semester, 90% of all Irving students passed all of their classes. The school a nearly 30% reduction of students being tardy. There was an observable reduction in student altercations and negative interactions, which were presumably egged on through social media and text conversations. And if that wasn’t enough, Kluck-Spann says there was a significant decrease in suspensions, in-school suspensions, and detentions.
“Our Irving community has been so supportive of the things that we do for their students, it’s just been really a positive experience for all of us,” she concluded.