High school students, parents to face new cell phone restrictions in North Thurston district
All of the North Thurston Public Schools — including the high schools — will embrace a cell phone rule already in place for its elementary and middle schools this fall.
Students will be allowed to have a cell phone, but phones — as well as headphones and earbuds — must be off and away during the school day. Smart watches also must be set to airplane mode, a setting that suspends their use as a phone.
Troy Oliver, the new superintendent of North Thurston Public Schools, announced the change in an interview with The Olympian on Monday. Teachers had pushed for the change, he said.
District spokeswoman Amy Blondin added that visual reminders about the rules will be posted at schools and information will be provided on school websites.
Oliver replaced former Superintendent Debra Clemens on July 1, following a competitive application process in which an Alaska administrator was offered and accepted the job, but later resigned. The school board then interviewed the two remaining finalists again, including Oliver, and he was named the new superintendent.
Prior to being named the district leader, Oliver participated in a public forum where he answered a series of questions, including some that touched on social media and teacher diversity. The Olympian asked him about some of those topics, as well as issues raised by the Lacey Equity Commission during Monday’s interview.
Here is the Q&A interview, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Middle schools in the district have an off-and-away-all-day rule for cell phones. Why not extend that to high schools?
Many of our schools have done this in a variety of different ways over the course of time, and we know that increasingly mobile phones and social media, and all that comes with it, is a distraction for students. A distraction for learning creates some situations where bullying manifests out of that sort of stuff.
So we are going to move towards a district-wide expectation of off and away all day. We’re still working out the details. There’s a lot of moving parts going on there, but it’s something that we feel is important if we want to meet many of the goals in our strategic plan around student learning and student outcomes. If a mobile phone is a distraction for a student, then we’re going to address that, just like we would if they don’t show up to class on time.
Beyond the cell phone, is there anything else you want to do with regard to social media?
There’s some things we can do around educating students on the use of social media and appropriate use of social media. How when you post something online, it’s there forever. I don’t think kids necessarily think about that when they’re 16 years old, that something’s going to pop up when they’re 28.
During the candidates forum you mentioned the need to improve teacher diversity. How?
We have a diverse classified staffing group and we are working very closely with Saint Martin’s University on how they can create programs that take our staff who are classified that want to go from a paraeducator position or an office professional position and get the training and background to enter the teacher workforce.
The other thing that we’re working on, and I think it’s a high leverage but long-range plan, is our Teacher Academy with our students in our schools. They can go through a Teacher Academy program that gets them thinking about teaching as a profession. And you figure, you know, 50% of our students are from the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) community. If 50% of (the Teacher Academy) is made up of those kids, and they want to come back to our community to teach, that’ll be a great way to improve diversity.
The Lacey Equity Commission questioned why the district doesn’t tap into the diversity of the community to teach, for example, more world languages. How do you reduce that barrier?
It is a barrier, and it’s something that we work on with professional education standards and boards on alternate paths to teaching credentials, teaching certificates, and we’ve done that with career and technical education programming in a lot of ways. So we’re continuing to look at that, and that absolutely is a path that we need to work on with the state and the certification requirements and how do we, you know, get people alternatively certified for any number of things.
What kind of superintendent do you want to be?
I want to be collaborative. I want to listen. I want to build trust. Every interaction you have with someone is an opportunity to build trust or erode trust, and I take that very seriously, so I want to work very hard to do that with individuals and groups, but also knowing full well that you’re not going to make everybody happy in every conversation and just being clear and honest about things. I don’t want to say we’re going to do something, then leave the room with no intention of doing it. If we can do it, we’ll do it. If we can’t, then we’ll let you know we can’t. We’ll have the conversation or figure out how we can maybe do it differently.
You weren’t the school board’s first pick to be superintendent. Are you in any way bitter about that?
I’ve been on the other side of the table. I’ve hired countless leaders in our district, and there’s never been a case where the candidate that we didn’t pick wasn’t also very qualified and very competent. You’ve got to make a decision, and that’s what the board did. So I’m absolutely not bitter.
Every interaction I’ve had with our school board members up to that point and since that point has been positive. We’re all here for the same reason. We care about kids, care about our staff, care about our community, and we’re all on the same page. The path to get here was odd, but I’m not looking back, I’m looking forward.
This story was originally published August 13, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
