Karns High School has enforced a new phone policy that started at the beginning of the second semester. Staff at Karns have noticed that students have a hard time focusing on schoolwork because they are on their phones. With the issue, Karns High School staff took the issue to administration. With the issue at school, the admin went to the board (school). Soon after the school board heard the issue, a new policy was put in place.

“I’m guessing it was put in place to keep students focused on their work… People have not been doing their work and instead been playing on their phones,” Joey Neely said about the new phone policy.

Many students have different views on the new phone policy. The new phone policy is a “traffic light” system, where red is no phones whatsoever, yellow is for work purposes, and green light is when you’re allowed to be on your phone.

“I hate it so much. There is no reason for it, most people still listen even if they have earbuds in,” Trinity Davis said.

Agree or disagree with it, should you still follow it? Some say yes and some say no, but everyone has a choice. You can choose to follow the rules or you can break them. Just make sure to consider the consequences.

“There have been a lot of teachers concerned about phone usage in class… a lot of push for a better policy school-wide,” assistant principal Chris Ottinger said.

The consequences for not following the policy are: the first step is a warning, the second step is your phone gets sat on the teacher’s desk for that period, the third step is your phone sits in the office for an extended period of time.

“I haven’t had a teacher who has enforced the rule,” Peyton Daily said.

Some teachers do enforce the new phone policy, and some do not. Some students have said that teachers enforce the rule in different variations. Some students may find this ironic that the whole reason the new phone policy was put in place was because the staff pushed for a new policy. But ultimately all teachers run their classrooms differently.