TEA Commissioner pushes to ban phones in Texas schools, citing distractions despite safety concerns
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Cell phones connect people, but their presence in schools is causing a divide.
Debates on banning them in school districts are happening across the nation. This week, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath called on lawmakers to do just that.
ABC13's news partners at the Texas Tribune report that Morath believes they are "extremely harmful to student progress" as concerns for mental health and distractions grow.
Eyewitness News sat down with Mike Matranga, a former Secret Service agent who has helped craft legislation on school safety.
"Before we have a knee-jerk reaction, I think we need to get some clarification from the commissioner on what his intentions are," Matranga said.
ABC13 did reach out to the commissioner's office for an interview on what the ban would entail, and we did not receive a response.
Matranga agrees that cell phones in schools can distract students from excelling in the classroom but worries about the potential impacts of a full-on ban or more restrictions.
"I would never support taking away a parent's right to be able to communicate during a crisis. We've seen where, in cases like Uvalde and in other cases, it was the actual students that informed law enforcement of a crisis," Matranga said.
One parent we spoke with says there needs to be some sort of middle ground.
"If they just want to put a box in the classroom and as the kids come in, put their phone there. I can see that being kind of a medium. It's just a safety factor," Jessica Meyer said.
Eyewitness News checked the policies for school districts around Houston. In HISD, students must leave their cell phones at home or in their backpacks.
In a news conference earlier on Thursday, Craig Straw, the district's safety and emergency management director, said phones can be problematic in dangerous situations.
"In the middle of an emergency, those types of communications and sounds can give away a position for a student. They create an environment to make it a lot harder to narrow down where that threat is, so that's why we use that silence," Straw said.
Eyewitness News reached out to other districts that said some form of cell phone ban that requires students to leave their phones in their bags during the school day is already being enforced.
