published by the Oakland Tribune

EL CERRITO, California – El Cerrito High School Junior Kenneth Thornton, 16, had switched his cell phone to vibrate and stashed it in the pocket of his baggy Rocca Wear jeans. When it went off in Jim Perrero’s Friday morning history class, he ducked under his desk.

“Who is this?” Thornton whispered, “I’m gonna call you back.”

Sliding back up into his chair, Thornton said he had to take the call.

“I didn’t know that number it could have been important.”

But answering a cell phone at El Cerrito High is now risky business. The school’s 1,250 students were greeted on the first day of school with warnings that their phones would be confiscated if they were in view at any time during school hours.

Last year, when hundreds of El Cerrito’s students flipped out their phones during lunch periods, the noise on the schools compact temporary campus could be deafening, assistant principal Jamersina Preston said. Students were often trying to hold two conversations at once: one with classmates, and another on the phone. The multitasking sometimes led to confrontation.

Preston said a student might use a profane word on the phone, but someone nearby at school would think the comment was meant for them. Fights, she said, could erupt “in seconds.”

In another incident last year, students involved in a fight used cell phones to call for back up. Friends from outside the school hopped the fence to join the fight, Preston said.

But even with the new ban, phones are ubiquitous. Students don’t carry simple calculators or wear watches anymore — they have phones for that. They use their phones like global positioning systems to find each other on campus, or to keep in touch with friends at other schools.

Senior Monet Smith, 17, didn’t hesitate to pull a charger from her backpack during Chris Silva’s English class to juice up her black Motorola.

“I’m not using (my phone), it’s off,” Smith said. “I just don’t want it to be dead when I leave school I have a doctor’s appointment and I just need to know where my daddy’s at.”

The West Contra Costa Unified School District, which includes El Cerrito High, established its cell phone policy in 2004, banning the devices from all classrooms. Principals were given discretion over whether to allow students to use them during lunch. Until now, the ban had not been enforced at El Cerrito during lunch or passing times, and it was not uniformly enforced in the classroom either.

Assistant Principal Preston said this year all the teachers at El Cerrito agreed to the crackdown. But in fact, teachers still differ in how they deal with the policy.
Silva, 28, lets students charge their phones in his classroom. The second-year teacher is sympathetic to students’ need to have cell phones for coordinating schedules or contacting their parents in an emergency.

But Silva said he will snatch cell phones when students are texting during class or chatting over lunch.

“They know this is the wrong place to screw around,” he said referring to the location of his portable at the back of the campus. “Normally the back of the school is where all the bad stuff happens, but this is the safest place on campus.”

Lawrence Pang, 23, a second-year math teacher, is more reluctant to confiscate phones.

First, he warns students, next he takes the phone and on the third offense he takes it to the office.

“I want to avoid the confrontation,” Pang said, explaining he first needs to get more credibility and experience with the students.

Pang also is trying to lead by example. On Friday, Pang confiscated his own phone.

“My (phone’s) alarm went off,” he said. “I pulled it out of my pocket, opened up my desk drawer, and dropped it in.”

Students seem to be getting the message. On the first day of school, more than 30 phones were confiscated from students, according to Assistant Principal Preston. The second day, about two dozen were taken. Now it’s down to three or four a day.
Students are using their phones less often during school hours, even if they refuse to leave them at home.

The silhouette of sophomore Kaiya Gatewood’s phone is obvious in the chest pocket of her jacket.

“I can’t live without my phone,” she said. “If I leave my phone at home and I’m at school, I go and get it.”

In the moments before the final morning bell rang last Friday, Gatewood got a half-dozen text messages wishing her a happy 16th birthday. Her friends had to rush to get their messages in before 8:15 a.m.

“I don’t get any text messages during school,” Gatewood said, “because you can’t use your phone during school.”rr