At least one Kansas district is projecting $150,000 to $180,000 just to equip secondary students with individual phone lockers, according to the Wichita Eagle. The state provided zero dedicated funding. Every dollar comes from local budgets.
Districts choosing fabric locking pouches — think Yondr, the magnetic-lock system concert venues use to keep audiences present — face an estimated $30 per unit. Statewide, the Kansas Division of the Budget put that figure at roughly $13.4 million if every student received one, according to the Lawrence KS Times. Lockers require a steeper upfront investment. Neither option came with a state check attached.
Legislators passed the policy. The price tag was someone else’s problem.
They could just leave them at home. I mean that worked just fine literally forever until these last two generations.
But, since both parents and kids are now addicted to the damn things, no one can imagine not having one in their hand for more than five minutes.
Worked so well, let’s avoid looking at the states of the world… Just install parental control and look the phone during their school time like a fucking responsible parent…
It doesnt look like returning the devices has to be immediate or convenient. Heres my proposed plan:
Ban devices entirely. Any item discovered gets confiscated, labeled, and placed in a bin in the office (achieving the “secure” location requirement of the bill.) Students are permitted to label their item. Items are available for pickup weekly at the end of a district-wide midday “value of education” parental education session.
Labelmaker: ~$200/school
Labels: $0.01/item
2 hrs labor weekly: 38×2×$50=$3800/district/year
Value of inconveniencing parents enough to care: priceless.
Look valid, crappy idea. So now the director is responsible if a child is stuck somewhere and can’t reach it’s parents while going to school or coming from school.
They do it like me in ye olden days of the 2000s:
- Alert the teacher
- Go to the school secretary office and ask for the phone
That was before enshitification. They dropped pur kid at a random bus stop two weeks before the end os school, bus had issues, we had to go fetch them 2km away. They warned nobody and counted on kid to warn their parents… In this case you expect them to do what ?
How does this work, are all students required to put a phone in the locker? What about kids who can’t afford a phone?
And what about kids who get a second phone to put in the locker so they can keep their main phone?
What about kids who can’t afford a phone?
No phone = Nothing to deposit
And what about kids who get a second phone to put in the locker so they can keep their main phone?
Get rekt. Rules for the poor.
They don’t want the next batshit stupid school shooting response to be so public.
I can do it for $149k
I mean I’ve seen a lot more money wasted on much dumber shit.
Kids aren’t going to learn if they’ve got handheld social media internet gaming consoles with them in school. I wouldn’t have. They’re not going to willingly put them away for hours every day. I wouldn’t have. So…lock the fuckers up. These kids need to be educated so I’m not being taken care of by drooling Idiocracy background actors when I’m in end-of-life care. There’s way too much stupid going around already.
To be clear, 180k is too much. I’m just saying I agree with locking the goddamn things up.
“If you take your phone out you get detention.” I don’t see why this doesn’t work anymore. Do parents have no control over their kids anymore? You get detention twice, 3rd time suspended, suspended twice 3rd time expelled. If I got suspended from school for taking my phone out my parents would have simply taken away the phone.
“Do parents have no control over their kids?”
Almost never had. Control is an illusion.
I don’t see why this doesn’t work anymore. Do parents have no control over their kids anymore?
I think you just answered your own question.
Clearly we’ve reached the stage of physically taking and locking their phones up during school hours because verbal threats weren’t working. If parents had control of what their kids were doing when not in close proximity to them, this wouldn’t be happening.
Lot of dumb adults out there these days. I think a lot of parents would be on the “but I need to contact them in case of emergencies” and “you’re threatening my child’s rights” boat if they just floated the idea of suspension for phone use. So now we’re at the physically confiscate them upon entering like contraband stage.
I need to contact them in case of an emergency doesn’t mean the phone is out. Also the only emergency that matters is if the kid is in danger and needs to call someone. If Dad falls down a flight of stairs and breaks his neck you either A, go pick the kid up from school or B tell him when he gets out of school. The kid isn’t a paramedic.
Also kids don’t have rights at school. That’s why they have the ability to search all their lockers, backpacks, and vehicles without a warrant.
There is no law that says you have a right to have your phone in your hand, or it would be illegal to seperate us from them to go through metal detectors and such at airports, courts, etc
Kids have no hope these days. Who gives a shit if you get detention? It won’t change your future.
Getting expelled from a school most definitely should effect your future. Alternative schools have never been known to be fun. They also don’t usually have buses that come near you, so parents are going to hate having to drive you there, and if they aren’t going you wind up in a situation where the kid gets taken by child protective services, and that’s not a system that has great futures for kids either.
You still can work in an amazon warehouse with or without school, same like most basic entry jobs. When kids realise the market is dead and no amount of education will provide a career they will stop caring.
Sorry teachers there’s just no room in the budget for raises. Oh and we’re adding 10 more students to all of your classes too.
Public education is ruined. Glad I graduated before phones were banned.
Yeah… I don’t know how us olds made it before the cellular phone was invented.
Sadly, you’re right. Different states handle it different ways and we’re still seeing disasters across the board.
I feel awful for the teachers I know. Kids apparently can’t even answer a question when it’s written on the board in front of them, and most can’t focus for more than 60 seconds.
Broader than the name suggests, HB 2299 covers cellphones, tablets, smartwatches, wireless earbuds, PDAs, and text-messaging devices — basically everything in a teenager’s backpack except a pencil.
Not like students would have textbooks or calculators or notebooks.
6 digits? When I was in school the teachers tossed them in a cardboard box
I remember a math teacher I had in high school. There was this one girl at the front of the class that would not get off her RAZR flip phone and it was buzzing constantly while she was texting people.
He warned her that if she didn’t put it away, he’d toss it out the window, and she could find it after school let out. She flipped him off and started texting again.
He took it and tossed it out the open window (on the first floor), into the grass. Then 20 minutes later it started raining. 😂
Yeah, that works too. Easy.
It is long past time cell phones started to be regulated in schools. (And nationwide, but that’ll never happen.)
BUT…
…what gets me is the money angle here. Can anyone out there help me understand why a temp-use cell phone locker is $180,000? To me, this just screams government malfeasance, and I’d bet someone involved in the passage of this bill either owns a company or took a bribe from the company that wants to sell $180,000 cell phone lockers that people are forced to buy.
Followed some links and did some googling. The school district in question is USD-261 in Haysville, Kansas. The high school should have about 1800 students, so they would need 67 of these cell phone lockers. The price for 6+ is $1510, but let’s knock another $110 off since they’re buying 11 times that many, so $1400. That’s $93,800, for just the high school, and that’s before we talk about where the hell you’re going to put 67 of those things, and who you’re going to pay to install them and do any necessary renovations to accommodate them.
I’m probably going to make a YT video on this later this week.
Do you mind if I use this info? Happy to credit you, just message me how you’d like it attributed and if you want me to shout anything out for you.
Go for it. I don’t need any recognition or anything. A couple disclaimers:
1 - I’m not from the area in question, but I work in the public sector overseeing spending, so I thought it was an interesting exercise in understanding the scale we end up dealing with. So my comment is just a demonstration. None of this is actual information about the specific school district’s plans. I’m assuming they must be getting their lockers even cheaper than the ones I found with a quick search, because with my numbers you’re blowing past $180k pretty quickly once you scale it up to the whole district.
2 - I used this site for the student population. I didn’t cross-reference it or anything, so I have no idea how accurate it is. It states 5788 total enrollment, with 31.2% at Campus High School, so that’s where I got the 1800 students. It looks like the district serves multiple southwestern suburbs of Wichita, which makes a little more sense since the total population of Haysville itself is under 12k.
The 180k price tag seems to be for the outfitting of the school district and not just one school.
They say that Kansas City spent 150k and that’s presumably one of the largest in the state.
It’s also 180K for a 15-20 year refresh cycle. These are commercial units that are used in harsh environments… not a cabinet you buy once and it sits in your bedroom.
Add in wiring plus the install costs and $180K seems like a good deal
“Used in harsh environments” like a middle school office where it gets opened twice a day?
Wiring for what? It’s a locker…
Can anyone out there help me understand why a temp-use cell phone locker is $180,000?
Corruption.
It’s for the entire district, and the costs don’t seem that high to me.
14000 slots for students means it’s $12.86 per student over (typically) 20 years…
$0.64 per student per year seems reasonable.
100% behind phone lockers, but, I do agree the price seems too high for this specific implementation. Looks like those hold ~250 phones each and I’m going to guess should cost $500-$1,000 per locker. A school should only be spending $5k-50k on these lockers.
Right?
$180,000 is absolutely insane. You could literally just get a lockable file cabinet from the 80’s or something and put each phone in its own file folder a few hundred.
It’s for the entire district, and the costs don’t seem that high to me.
14000 slots for students means it’s $12.86 per student over (typically) 20 years…
$0.64 per student per year seems reasonable.
This isn’t for one school, this is for the entire school district. Kansas City SD has 14,000 students across 33 schools. You also have to take into account paying for installation and shipping of 60 of those lockers.
A thief would make more money stealing the lockers than the phones.
In totally unrelated news, there is a trend of students starting to use older phone models.
Bring on the dumb phones, baby. Love it.
Cool idea until a school shooting happens
This is the most ameritard argument ever. Phones should absolutely not be in schools.
Yeah hi this story is in America so like yeah school shootings happen here
Then address that issue maybe?
Oh shit we haven’t thought of that hey can you tell us more
If Helen Keller were in middle school today, how would she communicate with her fellow classmates?
The shootings don’t change the fact that phones should not be in schools.
That’s what the $1 Million USD Pepper Spray Drones are for
why not just have lockers or better yet use the already existing ones? phones have to stay home or in the locker?
it’s a question of how you choose to enforce the policy. locking up phones as each student enters the building guarantees close to 100% compliance and the rest of the day is undisturbed.
if they just tell students phones have to stay in lockers then teachers will constantly have to be on the lookout for phones and will never get close to 100% compliance.
I don’t see how there is a difference. do they have cell phone sensing technology and have somone take them and lock them up or do students lock them up as they enter. it makes no difference if they lock them up in their locker or a special cell phone place. either way some students will try and sneak around it.
There are so many ways to handle this that don’t require $180,000 in spending. You could use a physical closet somewhere in the school, an old-ass lockable filing cabinet, or just require that they be left at home and punish offenders.
don’t even need to punish much. confiscate and can be picked up by the parents.
