As we inch closer and closer to the month of January, students in LAUSD schools wait in fear of a new policy banning phone usage from campus entirely. The policy itself was first announced to district parents, students, and teachers on June 18th, 2024 after its initial approval in a 5-2 vote among LAUSD board members according to an article from the LAist news outlet.
However, as many of the board members and other educators pat themselves on the back for their work to keep phones locked away, more important issues still exist in many different LAUSD campuses.
I’ll put it as straight as I can: the LAUSD school district does not have their priorities in check. While the board of education makes a stand to ban phones, a crisis of drug usage, student violence, and security concerns have risen behind the scenes and yet seem to be overshadowed by the idea the phones ruin a student’s ability to learn and take away from their “opportunity to just be kids.” In May 31st 2024, The Claremont Courier reported that by 2023, the amount of deaths due to overdose had come in at around 112,000. This number is frightening to say the least as it covers an overall average of people, most of whom are our age and in our grade, who have died due to an overdose.
And if that’s not enough, let’s look at another issue that could be a priority: student safety. Schools are meant to be a safe environment for students to learn, connect with one another, and become the bright thinkers of the future. But if that’s the case, then where is that environment? From an Edsource article on the very same matter, it said that only 61% of LAUSD students strongly agree that they feel safe at their own schools, while under a third said that they neither agree nor disagree, and eight percent strongly disagreed that they were safe on campus. And how could we forget that at our own school there was a stabbing just 2 years ago, resulting in student walkouts and even more backlash against the school board. What I’m suggesting isn’t just about why the phone ban is an unwise option, but rather to state in full certainty that LAUSD does not have their priorities in order when it comes to the importance of certain policies.
Our school district, in refusing to look at what really matters, will soon be on a teetering scale in which fentanyl death tolls raise on one side and student opinions on campus safety raise on the other. But among all that, you still decide to ban phones? Undoubtedly, the district is aware of everything that I’ve listed, and yet they choose to get rid of screens rather than work to get rid of several crises that more directly jeopardize students’ ability to learn. To LAUSD I ask, which would you rather have: a student coming into class with a phone, a pocket full of drugs or weapons, or a head full of thoughts concerning their safety.
