GUILDERLAND — As it considers a smartphone ban, the school district here is hosting a “formal panel discussion on distraction-free school environments,” the superintendent told the school board on Tuesday.

The in-person forum will be held on Dec. 9 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the high school’s large-group instruction room. The session will be live-streamed and also recorded.

Superintendent Marie Wiles told the board on Nov. 19, “This will be an information-gathering session for the school community and would help inform a cell phone-free policy.”

Panelists will include David Blanchard, superintendent of the rural Schoharie district, which adopted a ban at the start of the 2022-23 school year. He will discuss the changes in “learning engagement and student socialization” since the Schoharie ban was implemented, Wiles said.

Other panelists will include a Schoharie High School student, a member of the Guilderland Police Department, a licensed and certified school psychologist, a Guilderland middle-school teacher, and a teacher and an administrator from Guilderland High School.

School community members may submit questions to the panel through a form on the district’s website.

Governor Kathy Hochul, a proponent of banning smartphones in schools, started a statewide “listening tour” on the subject in July at Guilderland.

After the governor’s visit, Wiles told The Enterprise, when asked about the possibility of a statewide ban on smartphones in schools, “I would prefer that we arrive at a decision like we arrive at most decisions, which is by engaging our community, getting feedback, providing information and insight, and then moving forward rather than, ‘Well, we have to do it.’”

The president of New York State United Teachers, Melinda Person, attended the governor's session, and the August school board meeting opened with a letter from Person being read by the board’s president, Blanca Gonzalez-Parker.

Person, writing as the mother of four children in the district, called for a full ban of student use of smartphones “with reasonable exceptions on their use for instructional purposes and/or health and safety.”

“For students,” Person wrote of smartphone use, “it has sparked a mental health crisis, fractured attention spans and contributed to a wave of learning and social emotional deficiencies.”

All nine school board members at their August meeting supported addressing the matter.

In September, NYSUT hosted a conference in Albany, during which nearly 500 people heard experts, educators, and the governor express their concern about the use of smart devices in schools.

Two members of the Guilderland School Board, Tara Molloy-Grocki, a retired teacher, and Nina Kaplan, currently a teacher, attended the NYSUT conference and reported to the board on Oct. 1.

Molloy-Grocki said that, in August, she wasn’t sure she favored a ban but the conference, she said, “kind of pushed me over the line.”

Kaplan had been a proponent for a ban in August and told the board in October, “The support is there …. The science is there. And we even heard some tragic stories that I don’t think there was a dry eye at that point in the room.”

Wiles told the board in October that Guilderland will consider a ban on electronic devices as part of developing its budget for the 2025-26 school year. The cost of implementing the system, which would include pouches for students to put their devices in, would be about $110,000.

“We could weave this into the regular budget development process so the board would ultimately make the decision … when it adopts the budget in April,” said Wiles.

At the end of the Nov. 19 meeting, board member Rebecca Butterfield, who is a pediatrician, reported that the upstate New York chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics signed a letter of support for the passage of the federal Kids Online Safety Act.

“This is a bipartisan piece of legislation,” she said, “that would hold social media companies accountable to protect children.”

The act passed by a vote of 91 to 3 in the Senate in July; while the bill has advanced out of committee in the House of Representatives, it has not been voted on.

It was 1998 when Congress last passed a bill to protect children who are using the internet.

“The legislation provides federal protection for minors against mental-health harms, sexual exploitation and trafficking, financial harms cyberbullying, and illegal product placement,” said Butterfield. “The bill requires companies to go through independent external audits and create substantial youth and parental controls to create a safer digital environment for kids and adolescents.”

Butterfield concluded, “The reason I bring this up is because we’re obviously having our forum on December 9 regarding cell-phone usage and I thought it was timely.”

Other business

In other business at its Nov. 19 meeting, the Guilderland School Board:

— Learned from Wiles that the district has been awarded a $13,000 grant through Albany County for tobacco and substance use prevention. “This is a module-based program from the American Lung Association’s Vape-Free Schools Initiative,” said Wiles, crediting Guilderland resident Christine Duffy for writing the first draft of the grant.

“Nearly 8,000 kids start vaping every day,” says the American Lung Association’s video, which also says the Vape-Free Schools Initiative “addresses nicotine dependence and motivates students to quit”;

— Heard from two musicians, high school seniors Daniel Byon and Brendon Cao, who both praised the school’s music program and criticized “roadblocks and potholes that we persisted through” as Cao put it.

“Brendon and I deeply understand the impact of a well-equipped rehearsal space,” said Byon. “This ranges from the productivity of rehearsals to the overall enthusiasm, energy, and even connectivity between the musicians. An additional music facility will not only serve as an area for students to practice, rehearse, and strengthen their musical abilities, but offer a distinct location where the students can comfortably call their home within GHS”;

— Applauded Byon and Cao along with junior Yoonsoo “Sam” Woo all of whom were chosen by the New York State School Music Association from adjudicated performances to perform in the NYSSMA Conference All State Music Ensembles. Two other Guilderland juniors — Young Xu, and Zexi “John” Wang — were named as alternates.

The chosen students will spend four days in Rochester, from Dec. 5 to 8, rehearsing for a concert at Kilbourn Hall at the Eastman School of Music;

— For School-Related Professionals Day, Nov. 19, heard praise from Wiles for the “dedicated support staff that make public schools run smoothly. They help educate, transport, and feed children as well as keep them safe in school,” she said;

— Heard about the district’s third Superintendent’s Conference Day this year, on Nov 5. At the district’s five elementary schools, teachers met with parents in individual conferences while high school and middle school staff got training on the Positivity Project and equity actions;

— Heard from Wiles that the Facilities Committee met on Nov. 6 and reviewed the Future Ready Task Force subcommittees’ research, looked at building-condition surveys for all seven school buildings, and considered technology needs across the district and the infrastructure the district will need for electric school buses.

The Facilities Committee will make recommendations to the school board in February for a May 2025 capital project public referendum;

— Heard from Wiles that the Albany County Legislature recognized Guilderland High School for “fostering civic education through the implementation of the New York State Education Department’s Seal of Civic Readiness program.”

The seal, according to a proclamation from the county, shows that “a student has attained a high level of proficiency in civic knowledge, skills, mindset and experience, demonstration a strong commitment to participatory government, civic responsibility, and civic values”;

— Unanimously passed new or updated policies on sex discrimination and sex-based harassment, on independent education evaluation, on facility dogs, and on the rights of employes to express breast milk at the workplace; and

— Heard from Butterfield that she participated in a Nov. 19 rally at the state capitol to end child poverty. She noted that the state’s Child Poverty Reduction Act of 2022 is “committed to cutting the child poverty rate in half by 2032.”

 Under the Official Poverty Measure, 18.8 percent of New York’s children — nearly one in five — were in poverty in 2022; that is one of the worst rates in the nation, according to a May 2024 report from the state comptroller. 

Butterfield told her sister board members, “It would behoove us to advocate for [meaningful statewide investments] especially since focussing on the needs of our most vulnerable students was one of our goals.”