Thomas MacMillan Photo
Jesse Ricciardelli was in the hallway of Wilbur Cross High School after sixth period on Monday. She pulled out her Blackberry and quickly showed a photograph of a friend to her classmate. All of sudden she heard a voice boom from behind her: “You!”
With that, Ricciardelli became the latest casualty in a crackdown on cellphone use at Wilbur Cross High School.
The junior turned and saw a school administrator bearing down on her. She was immediately sentenced to three days of out-of-school suspension. That’s a first for Ricciardelli (at left in photo), an Advanced Placement junior at Cross.
She joins around 150 Cross students who received out of school suspensions this past week. They were found to be in violation of school rules prohibiting cellphones and iPods and wearing hats or coats inside.
Before last week, those rules had been enforced laxly or not all, said Ricciardelli and student council Vice-President James Doss-Gollin (at right in photo). The sudden change to zero-tolerance enforcement has disrupted the learning environment of the school and met with strong objections from students, said Doss-Gollin.
Principal Rose Coggins said that recent enforcement has not come out of nowhere. Last week’s switch to an automatic three-day out-of-school suspension for rule violations was the final phase in escalating attempts at enforcement. The first phase was warnings about cellphone and iPod use, Coggins said. “We kept saying that all day long. ‘Put it away. Put it away.’”
When the warnings didn’t work, administrators switched to phase two: in-school suspensions. That still didn’t work. “We had to do something to really drive the message home,” Coggins said. “This was kids just being defiant.” It was more than just electronics, Coggins said. Students have been cutting class and in the hallways without passes.
Hence, phase three: automatic three-day suspension. Coggins said she made several announcements last week warning about the shift, then administrators started handing out suspensions. Coggins said there had been around 150 suspensions given last week.
“It is a crackdown,” said Michelle Wade, spokeswoman for the New Haven Public Schools. “I guess that’s a way to put it.”
Wade said administrators at Cross stepped up enforcement of all school rules starting last week. The crackdown is aimed primarily at iPod use, but cellphones and hat-wearing have also been part of the effort.
The crackdown began when visitors to the school — including city school officials — saw students wearing headphones in the hallways, Wade said. Officials spoke with school administrators, who decided, “Enough is enough.”
Enforcement of school rules covering personal electronics had been lax, Wade said. As a result, things were “getting out of hand.”
“This is an effort to get things back to a much more peaceful and focused environment,” Wade said.
Students complained the crackdown has been disruptive and unfair. It is wrong of administrators to go from very little enforcement to immediate suspensions overnight, said Doss-Gollin. He stopped to talk on Monday at 1 p.m. outside Wilbur Cross, as he was on his way to a class at Yale.
The junior gave several examples of what he described as egregious acts of enforcement. A friend of his showed up to school early to print out his homework in the school library. He was in the cafeteria and pulled out his phone to check the time, to see if the library had opened yet. Suspension.
Doss-Gollin said another student was suspended while giving a class presentation. An administrator walked by, noticed she was wearing a hat, and suspended her.
Three days of out of school suspension isn’t a reasonable penalty for these behaviors, said Doss-Gollin. Pulling out a cellphone or wearing a hat “doesn’t seem to be on par with drugs and violence,” he said.
This is a particularly bad time to start suspending large numbers of students, Doss-Gollin said. Midterms are in two weeks, sophomores have state exams coming up, and SATs are in the spring, he said. Having large amounts of students out of class is disruptive to individual classes and to school learning in general.
As Doss-Gollin was speaking, Ricciardelli burst out of the school. “I was just suspended!” she exclaimed. “It’s horrible!”
She recounted how she’d gotten caught showing a Blackberry photo to a friend. Ricciardelli, who takes three AP classes, said she’s worried about missing three days of class.
The crackdown is “completely uncalled for,” she said. Before, students could walk the halls typing messages on their phones. “Everybody was texting.” Now, with suspensions coming down left and right, “It’s gone too far,” Ricciardelli said.
Change To Come?
Doss-Gollin said he has no objection to the rules themselves. “We’re not arguing the policies,” he said. It’s the abrupt change in enforcement that is the problem, he said.
But Wade said students and parents received ample notice. Administrators have been giving warnings to students since the beginning of school, Wade said. She said, several robo-calls went out to Wilbur Cross parents last week, informing them that the school was about to implement its zero-tolerance policy. High school students should take responsibility for their actions, Wade said.
Doss-Gollin said he agrees that “cellphones and iPods have no place in school … but missing three days of class time is inconvenient for learning.” The administration’s priority should be keeping students in school, he said.
On Monday morning, Doss-Gollin and other members of student council met with Wilbur Cross Principal Rose Coggins to talk about the crackdown. They asked her to implement a policy of escalating punishments for rule infractions — maybe detention first, then in-school suspension, then out-of-school suspension.
“We were very pleased with what she had to say,” Doss Gollin said. He said Coggins promised to speak with administrators downtown about implementing such a system.
Coggins said that she would be talking to district administrators.
She said that the suspensions are beginning to change the school environment. Students are getting the message and beginning to abide by the rules.