NC moves to ban smartphones in classrooms (02-27-2025--Hour2)

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[00:00:29] Senate Bill 55, sponsored by Republican Senators Mike Lee of, not that one from Utah, but the one from New Hanover County and Jim Bergen of Harnett County, as well as Lisa Barnes of Nash County, encourages school boards and charter schools to develop and enforce policies that limit distracting technologies in classrooms. This is the Senate version. Okay, this one was introduced earlier this month.

[00:00:55] Senate Bill 55, the House has its own bill, and it made it out of the, what was it, the education, the K-12 Education Committee that went through on a voice vote, and now heads over to the House Judiciary Committee. Very similar bills, a little different, but they're basically telling local school districts, come up with some policy.

[00:01:16] Because while 77 of the districts already have some policy, the rest do not. And I would say, I don't remember how many there are total, how many districts there are total, but there's probably about 40, I guess, left that don't have a policy.

[00:01:29] And they need one. They need to have a policy. And the state isn't, like, telling you exactly what it should be, but they're saying it should, at a minimum, should prohibit students from using, displaying, or having powered on wireless communication devices during instructional hours. That includes cell phones, laptops, tablets, what's a pager, two-way radios, and gaming devices.

[00:01:57] Schools will have the flexibility to decide specific violations and implement consequences, such as confiscating devices or instituting disciplinary action.

[00:02:36] So what do you think? Do you like this approach? Should it just be mandatory bans across the state and all of the school districts? Do you trust the school districts to come up with their own particular policies? And what of this idea that the teachers are probably happy to ban them? Maybe, maybe some are not, but maybe teachers are happy to get those things out of the classroom.

[00:03:00] But it's the parents who are like, I need to be able to call my kid whenever I need to, or they need to call me whenever they need to. What do you think? 704-570-1110. Let me go and talk to Peter first. Hello, Peter. Welcome to the program. Great name. What's up? Hey, Pete. Yep. Can you hear me okay? Yes, sir. Sure can. Yeah, I would just say, Seth, your emailer before this probably hit the nail on the head. That's what I was going to try to reference.

[00:03:31] And just developing policy, number one, has to be at the top of the ticket there for each, whether it's district or county or state. Right. And then, you know, I was just going to add to that, you know, that's a zero cost policy, right? Is if you have a policy, it doesn't cost you guys anything to implement it.

[00:03:52] But if there was another out-of-the-box thinking idea, you ever been to like a comedy show and they don't want you to record anything, so they put your cell phone in a little pouch? I've never had them do that to me, but I know that that I've been to a comedy show and, but the one it was actually went and saw Kevin Hart when he came to Charlotte. And yes. Yeah. So I went to that show. Oh, okay. Yeah. But, but I don't, I don't think that they took our phones for that, but I didn't see anybody recording.

[00:04:20] They did tell us we're not allowed to record. And they said that, you know, somebody would come and kick us out if we did. But I don't remember, I don't think they gave us a bag because I know like they don't, they have like bags or something that they put your phones in. Yeah. And then you just, you know, with technology these days and all that, maybe, you know, at 315 when the bell rings, obviously these little neoprene pouches automatically unlock somehow.

[00:04:45] But, you know, obviously there would be a cost involved in that, that probably wouldn't be able to support every district. But that's where going back to Seth's email and what you're saying, we all agree with. Well, I think as a parent, I agree with. How do they do the, how do they do the, have you been to a comedy show where they took the, where they took your phone? Yeah. Okay. And what do they do with it? Do you know? Well, you actually keep it. You put it in a pouch that they provide to you.

[00:05:13] And the phone or device must go in the pouch. They lock it with this special plastic key, you know, and then on your way out, the same people that handed you the pouch are sitting there with a little buzzer and it just automatically unlocks the thing. And, you know, you dump the pouch into a container that they, they recollected every single day. Huh. But if I'm going to bring my phone to school, you know, I have to put it in this pouch, which means I can't access it.

[00:05:44] Yeah. Well, it seems like that might, yeah, like, that seems like a pretty easily applied technology. Yeah, it's already in, it's already out there. Yeah. It's an adoption opportunity. But again, policy number one, this actually would cost the school's money. So I'm not advocating for that. I'm just suggesting it's an idea that's already existing. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know how that, I had heard that there were bags, but I never knew how they actually worked. So that's interesting. They all open it.

[00:06:13] You walk back out and they open them individually or is it like a code that goes out and they all open at the same time? The one I've had, it opens, someone waves a wand across it, right? And it kind of just unlocks it. Kind of like at the register, if you're checking out a Belks or something. Yeah. Something. And there's like a little plastic tab that keeps it from being stolen.

[00:06:37] You know, you have to cross this little sensor somehow before it'll unlock the pouch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that seems like a pretty, it seems like a very low cost option again. But how do you, you know, where, where does the funds come from? Oh, you know what? They could take some of the American rescue plan money from the COVID pandemic. They probably got a bunch of that still laying around. Maybe they could. There you go. Yeah. Peter, I appreciate the call, buddy. Thank you. Thanks, Pete. All right. See ya. No, it's interesting.

[00:07:05] I didn't know the, uh, yeah, cause they just told us at the Kevin Hart show, they just said, um, that they will kick us out if they see any phones come on, which, you know, and maybe because it was in a larger space that they couldn't, they didn't have enough bags for the size of that audience. Cause it was a pretty big crowd, right? I think it was at the, I think it was at Spectrum Arena. I want to say, I don't remember. It's been a while.

[00:07:35] Spencer, welcome to the program. Hello, Spencer. How are you doing today? Hey, I'm good. What's going on? I'm glad that you mentioned that they have a medical exception to the rule because there are many kids that have diabetes and they have things like a continuous glucose monitor attached to their body.

[00:07:59] And maybe they have an insulin pump that has an infusion system attached to their body. And it's also communicating with their smartphone via Bluetooth. And you put, you put that phone in that bag. It cuts off the Bluetooth. The phone starts screaming because it can't communicate with the devices. Yeah. No. Yeah.

[00:08:27] And I think that's a reasonable exemption right now. What would be the punishment if you were found to be using your smartphone for non-insulin pump related activities during class? Like that would be, you know, that would obviously have to be spelled out like what the infractions are, but I would venture to guess that the student is not interested in having that smartphone or having any punishment handed down on them because they're using the smartphone as they're not supposed to be. They don't want to lose it either.

[00:08:56] So, you know, especially if it's connected to some life-saving diagnostic tool. That's correct. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Spencer, I appreciate the call. That is in the Senate Bill 55. It does provide that exemption for medical reasons or also for special education plans.

[00:09:19] So if there is some necessity, right, for the smartphone, then I think reasonable people can agree. I hope. Let me just say it that way. I hope reasonable people could agree. But we live in very stupid times. So, you know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations.

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[00:10:47] Last year, one of my nephew's teachers had a basket at the front of the room. The kids were to drop their phones in the basket, and then they could retrieve them at the end of instruction. People overcomplicate things. Yeah, that is the low-tech solution, I think. Right? You have a box. You have a basket. You put it at the front. It's like, everybody put your phones in. And then if you, here's the thing, though.

[00:11:16] If you get caught with the phone, right? If you don't drop your phone in the basket, and then it goes off or you're using it, you get busted using the phone, what are the policies then? That's what the state is telling all of the school districts to figure out. Right? Come up with some policy. Have a policy of some kind that clearly spells out the punishments.

[00:11:43] And this way, you can enforce your ban. Because there's no point in saying, everybody drop your phone in the basket, and then you catch people with their phones. They suffer no ramifications for it. And then pretty soon, nobody's dropping their phones in the basket because there's no penalty for ignoring the rule. Right?

[00:12:07] Jeff says, on the subject of smartphones, am I the only one who thinks that whole story of the guy locked in the... Oh, that's funny. I was just talking to Pam Warner about this. Am I the only one who thinks the story of the guy who got locked in a storage unit for four days until he found his phone to call police? Could he not make a voice command to have the phone call out? I know most smartphones have that function.

[00:12:35] So Jeff is talking about this story. Some guy, the story was like, what, yesterday or something, where some guy got claims, at least, that he was locked in a storage unit for four days. That his girlfriend locked him in there, and he had dropped his phone somewhere in the storage unit, and he couldn't find it. And so he was in there for four days without food or water. However, you cannot survive three days without water.

[00:13:05] You will, like, you'll be dying. Okay? So I don't know what was really going on there, but that whole story stinks to me. It does. Like, there are so many gaps in that story that I need information on. Like, I need to see an image of the storage unit. Like, was it really full? Where was he? Because how do you get your... How... Like, I'm assuming you went into the unit, and I'm assuming it's a garage door pull-down unit, right? But maybe not.

[00:13:34] Maybe it's a door. I had a unit that was like that. It was just a closet, basically. So maybe it was a door, so it was easily closed. But a lot of the units that I've used or seen over the years, they have the open mesh up on top. Right? It's like a grate. It's not a... It doesn't go all the way up to the ceiling. So I am not sure. Like, I need to see an image of the unit.

[00:14:02] And if it's a garage door, how did he get all the way into the back, I assume, and then not be able to get out before his girlfriend closes the door down on him and is able to put the padlock on the thing? Again, I'm assuming it's a padlock, but I don't know. Again, I need a lot more information. I don't understand about the tech either. Now, regarding the voice commands, I have all of my stuff shut off. So, like, I don't get notifications.

[00:14:30] I don't get the constant dings and beeps and whistles and stuff on my phone. I shut all that crap down, like, six, seven years ago. I do not need to be Pavlov's dog. Right? I don't need to hear every beep for every single notification. I get literally thousands of emails a day. I don't need to hear every single ding and bing and whatever. So I shut all that off. I don't want the voice command either. I don't want to talk to my phone.

[00:14:59] I do not want to tell it to do anything. I don't want – I don't need some, you know, some digital servant. I don't even know how I would do that on my phone. And I don't want to know. Although I've never been locked in a storage unit. So maybe – like, I say that now, but maybe – yeah. Maybe if I find myself in a storage unit locked, I will, you know, figure out how to get the phone. And how did the phone get lost in the storage unit in the first place? All right.

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[00:16:23] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Let's talk to Skip. Welcome to the show, Skip. How are you? Hey, Pete. It's Cole Saul. Skip, man. I've met you a couple times at the Crime Stoppers. Yes, sir. You doing well? Yeah, I'm doing well. I hope you are. Yeah. It's funny you were mentioning about that storage unit because I have a storage unit there. It's where I keep my business stock.

[00:16:53] Okay. This is Cooper Storage is the name of the place I was looking up during the break. Cooper Storage off of Old Charlotte Highway in Monroe. That's correct. That is correct. It's a very well-traveled area and the storage unit is very busy. Uh, so what I noticed, I was talking to my wife last night about is, Terry, there is no way that this guy could have been stuck in there for four days in that storage unit.

[00:17:23] Uh, there is, they are sealed off on top. So there's no netting or mesh or anything like that. And you are correct. It is a pull-down garage door. That, I gotta tell you, is not easy to pull down rapidly. And then once you pull it down, you have to line it up just right to slide the metal bolt into the frame. Right. Then you put your padlock on it. Right.

[00:17:51] So let's say she was able to do all that before he could get out. If I'm stuck in there, I am beating on that door continuously because it's not a huge facility and there's a lot of activity, a lot of traffic through there. Somebody's going to hear him. What are the walls? Are the walls concrete in between each of the units or are they metal? No, they are metal.

[00:18:21] But now where they have joined back to back, I believe, and I don't know because I'm full up back there, but I believe it's sheetrock. Right. Between the two units. Now, of course, you break through that sheetrock, you're going to be in another locked unit. Right.

[00:18:39] But my point to my wife was if I'm beating on that door, you're going to be heard at the Dollar General across the street or the little shopping mall that also has a lot of traffic. If you're beating frantically on that metal door with something, your hands even, somebody is going to hear you in four days. So, right. So this is why I said, like, I need more.

[00:19:07] I need more information to understand what happened, because according to the the story here, this is from WBTV. And it's based on the Monroe Police Lieutenant Morgan Malone and the 911 call. Police say the man and his girlfriend had been arguing before she allegedly asked him to retrieve something from the back of the storage unit.

[00:19:31] So he climbs inside, goes to the very back of the unit, and that's when she pulls the door down and locks him. And according to the lieutenant, the storage unit was described as being a hoarder's paradise. As soon as the officers opened up the door, stuff started falling out. And the further they opened it, the more stuff fell out. Police believe the crowded room and complete darkness made it difficult for the man to find his phone and call for help.

[00:20:02] Okay. So if he had climbed over, like, a whole bunch of stuff to get to the very back of the unit, and that's when she closes the door down, and now he's in darkness. And I don't know, like, is it completely sealed off? Like, where there would be no light coming in whatsoever? I believe it will be dark in there. I do believe that with the door down. It's a pretty good fitting door.

[00:20:29] And if he was climbing over stuff, it takes me about 10 or 15 seconds to get my unit locked when I reach up and grab the thing. So it's possible. It's possible. But I got to tell you, this supposedly happened on Thursday. Right. I was at my unit on Friday getting stuff for my jobs, and I drove around in there, and I didn't hear anything.

[00:20:57] If I would have been locked in there, trust me, you would have heard me. You would have probably heard me in the studio. That's right. Skip, good to hear from you, buddy. I appreciate the call. Thanks for the intel. Yeah, man. Thanks. All right. Good show. Yeah, thanks. See ya. Yeah, like I said, I got a lot of questions. And the guy said he had no cell phone service inside, so he was only able to call 911.

[00:21:22] And according to WBTV, they say if that's true, then that would mean his phone would not have been lighting up or making noises or vibrations from notifications. See, and on this, I cannot speak because, like, I still get, but I have them all turned off, so I don't even know. And how did you lose track of your phone? Like, did you set it down so you would then go climb in? Why would you have just put it in your pocket or something?

[00:21:46] Or maybe he set it down on something in the front of the unit and then started climbing, or maybe it fell out of his pocket or something. I don't know. Like I said, there are gaps in the story is all I'm saying. All right, so now let's talk to Walter about smartphones in schools. Hey, Walter, what's up? Hey, Pete. I'm sorry I don't have anything as dramatic as the storage story, but just a couple of observations.

[00:22:12] I would be one of those old crotchety guys that would think that the schools ought to just not allow the cell phones at all. But if they're going to have to and if the parents put pressure on the schools to allow it, then step number one is beginning of every school year, every parent has to sign a cell phone form that lists all the rules and regulations that their children will be expected to comply with.

[00:22:37] Number two, that there would actually be a financial penalty, a fine, as it were, for multiple, for violations of the cell phone rules. And last but not least, after you have so many violations, the phone is confiscated and it will only be returned if the parents come to the school to get it. Hmm. Well, I will say, like, the first reaction that probably most people would have to the financial penalty would be something like,

[00:23:05] oh, my gosh, you know, you know, fines or that would be too draconian or whatever. But I guess that's what I started thinking. But the more I thought about it as you were as you were talking, I was like, well, but Charlotte does that very thing with our alarm systems in our homes where you get you get false alarms. They start fining you. Yeah, I don't think it's that big a deal. I mean, so if the kid violates rule, it's 10 bucks. And then the next time, it's 20 bucks.

[00:23:35] And the next time, it's 50 bucks. The next time they take the phone and the parents have to engage by physically going to the school to get the phone back. Yeah. That, if you start inconveniencing the parents, they're a whole lot more likely to hold their kids to those rules. Just one person's opinion. Yeah. Well, we could also do like a walk of shame kind of thing where they would take the tablet and bang it on their head as they walk through the halls. Maybe the parent I'm talking. Yeah, I don't know. Too much violence there.

[00:24:05] Okay. Walter, I appreciate the call, buddy. Thank you. The bills right now at the legislature are just telling the school districts, come up with policies, write them out, and everybody knows what the penalties would be, right? So there are penalties that then can be enforced. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in Western North Carolina, just a quick drive up the mountain?

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[00:25:30] Call or text 828-367-7068. Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. The ban on smartphones in schools, there's a ban working its way through the state legislature up in Raleigh, and also the guy that got locked in a storage unit for like four days, and then finally found his smartphone. They arrested his girlfriend who apparently allegedly locked him in that storage unit,

[00:25:58] charged her with attempted murder and kidnapping. So, yeah, those are the topics on the table. Let's head over to the phones. Hello, Vince. Welcome to the program. What's up, Vince? Hello, Pete. Hey. Hello, Pete. Yes, sir. I enjoy your show. Thanks. I was just wondering, my cell phone wouldn't last four, the battery wouldn't last four days. Unless, I guess, maybe if it were turned off, it could have lasted that long.

[00:26:26] But it seems pretty odd that he would have a fully functioning phone after four days. Yeah, this is one of those questions that I need answers to also. How does the phone keep its battery life that long unless the guy has like some, maybe he's got like a lot of memory in the phone. It's a brand new phone, and so they haven't. Because like, I think that the phone companies and all these apps,

[00:26:50] they keep doing updates to their apps, which take up more and more and more memory on your phone, and then it eventually breaks your phone because it keeps draining the battery so fast. So I don't know. Yeah, like I would need to know, like, how old is this phone? Why did the battery last so long? And supposedly, he did not have any cell phone service, and that's why he wasn't getting alerts or anything like that, and he couldn't find it, and it wouldn't work or whatever.

[00:27:18] But I'm not sure how that would work. But also, wouldn't the phone keep looking for cell service, right? And using the battery while it was doing that. And so I don't, I'm not clear on that either. Yeah, okay. Well, I just thought I'd bring it up. Yeah, no, it's a good question. I don't have an answer for it. Vince, I appreciate the call. It's, yeah, that's one of the things that don't make sense to me. How did the phone survive?

[00:27:48] Now, I will say, in the WBTV story, after receiving the call on Monday, WBTV reports, officers forced their way into the storage unit, discovering the man inside in a state of dehydration. Now, because that's what I said. You can't live longer than three days without water.

[00:28:12] And he claimed on the 911 call that he hadn't had anything to eat or drink in those four days. So him being in a state of dehydration, then that tracks. So he was in there, or unless he was dehydrated before he went in there and then was only in there for a shorter period of time. I don't know. But it seems like, the other thing is, like, how do you know you've been in there three days or four days? How would you know that? Or did they just piece that together after the fact?

[00:28:44] Because when he called 911, he said, I've been locked in a storage unit for about a week now. How do you know you've been in there a week? You can't tell the passage of time or day, or maybe he could somehow. Maybe it was based on temperature, right? When it got cold, he knew it was nighttime or something. Yeah, a lot of questions. I got lots of questions. On the cell phones in school, Washington Examiner had this story a couple of days ago.

[00:29:13] A fall 2023 Pew Research survey found that 72% of high school teachers say cell phone distraction is a major problem in their classrooms. And the poll is one of several which have shown cell phone usage in classrooms has been a problem, even if students believe cell phones help them in the classroom.

[00:29:37] By the way, any student that is telling you that they need their cell phone in their classroom because it helps them do their work, like, I'm not buying it. I'm not buying it. Unless your assignment in the classroom is open up your smartphone and do this task, then I don't see how, really. Right? Math, oh, I need it for my calculator.

[00:30:09] Maybe. But even then, I'm not so sure. Do they make you buy calculators separately? I don't even know. I haven't even seen a calculator for sale on the shelves, like, anywhere. I'm trying to think. I don't even know. Like, that was a requirement when I was in college. Well, when I was in college, I took statistics. And then I took it again. And then I took it again.

[00:30:37] And then I took it again. And the fourth time, I passed. So the other three times, I dropped the class because I was doing so poorly in it. Because the professor of math at Winthrop University would not allow us to have graphing calculators. So they made us memorize all of the formulas. And I couldn't remember the formulas. It's just the different side of my brain. I could not remember all of the different formulas to figure out the stuff.

[00:31:07] I knew the concepts just fine. But I could not remember the formulas. I couldn't apply them. And then I went over to York Technical Community College for a summer class that transferred. The credit transferred. Not the grade. But the credit would. And the first day, they're like, a requirement for this class is a Texas Instrument 91 calculator. Grapping calculator. And I got a 120 in that class. All right. That'll do it for this episode.

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