With school about to resume across the state, parents, students and administrators must decide whether students have cell phones.
Alan Mundey with the University of Missouri Extension is a former teacher himself. He sees cell phones as offering too many opportunities for problems, such as sharing answers on tests or visiting Facebook during class.
Many parents want their children to have phones if only to use in the case of an emergency. Mundey says that can lead to overloaded communication systems during a crisis, when too many people try to get on cellular systems at once.
He says cell phone policies vary from district to district and even school to school within districts. With so many phones easy to conceal, however, those are hard to enforce.
So, Mundey says, the final decision about whether students have permission to carry phones falls on parents. He just suggests they work with administrators in making it.