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Letter from Superintendent George Weber on the Phone Policy
Posted by George Weber on 1/17/2025
Parents and Caregivers,
Thank you for all you do. Our community and our schools are blessed that we have a place where so many people (parents, grandparents, friends, community members, and school staff) provide guidance, love, and support for children. Guiding children provides both the most rewarding role in life and also the most challenging.
Our Schools have taken a bold step to do what we know is best for children, by developing a plan to alleviate the ongoing stressors of
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overwhelming bombardment of pressured expectations from real and fake companies from all over the world,
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the thundercloud of chatter that hangs over the heads of everyone on social media,
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the pressure to broadcast what might be cool, to respond to all the other broadcasts, and to beat others to whatever the story is, whether it is real or fake.
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being included on other’s social media posts during the school day, whether they approved or had no idea their photo was being shared to the world.
All of these, and many more, add up to a weight that teenagers now have to carry around, that for centuries, teens in their developmental years across our planet did not have to bear.
We now have mountains of evidence that this new burden our society has added to the lives of young people is absolutely correlated to greater anxiety, stress, inability to focus, poor retention, and a host of other negative consequences. And the fact is, with the exception of a few who monitor a medical condition, most all of us, and certainly children, do not really need it.
We are asking for your support in making this social behavior change for your children, knowing that as parents, and school staff, we will likely be challenged by children who do not want to do it. Undoubtedly, many teens do not believe we really will follow through. Some teens have spent so much time interacting with the addicting algorithms the companies sell, that right now they do not know how they can make it seven hours without it.
This is one of those moments where if we partner in doing this well, we can look back years from now and realize it was one of the best decisions we made for children. For some, it will be hard. But to some degree, that also shows why it is necessary. It should not be difficult to set a device down for seven hours and live life with humanity.
We believe that if our students are allowed the chance, they will learn how to interact and spend their school day learning. You are about to give your child a better school experience. It might take a month, six months, a year before your child feels it or believes you, but it almost certainly will turn out that way if we stick with it.
Sincerely,
George Weber, Superintendent
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