Recently, Baldwin High School has required all of their students to put their phones in Yondr pouches. The Yondr company was founded by a retired soccer player named Graham Dugoni. He came up with the idea for the Yondr pouch after seeing a drunk person being recorded at a music festival without that person’s permission. It uses technology similar to electronic merchandising tags to stop people from using their phones. Yondr pouches are being used in schools, concerts, churches, and even courtrooms to prevent people from using their phones when the people running the place don’t want them to.
The Yondr company has spent thousands of dollars lobbying for laws banning phones in schools. According to an article from New York Magazine, the Yondr company spent $50,000 paying the lobbying firm Patricia Lynch Associates to convince the state of New York to implement the law. They also paid the lobbying firm Actum $15,000 in order to promote a similar law in California. These lobbying pushes have succeeded. Thirty five states have laws which limit phone usage in schools. Different schools have implemented these policies in different ways. Some schools ask students to keep their phones in a locker. Other schools just ask students to keep their phones in a backpack.
Some have criticized the Yondr pouches as being an overly expensive and flawed method of enforcing state laws on phone usage. In Portland, Oregon, where the state provides no money to schools to help enforce their phone ban, some high schools have resorted to asking parents for donations to fund purchases of Yondr pouches. Students have tried to circumvent the pouches by putting fake phones in them, among other methods. Many students try to put anything but their phones inside the pouches, such as Rx bars, calculators, or even portable board games. Sometimes the students are encouraged by concerned parents who want to be able to reach their child in case of an emergency. The circumvention problem has been so bad that the CEO of Yondr visited schools in person to ask teens about how they get around the pouches. These critics have proposed alternative methods of enforcing these laws, like using centralized phone lockers instead of letting students carry their phones around with them in pouches.
It’s unclear how much Baldwin has spent on these pouches. However, the school charges 40 dollars for a broken pouch. Assuming that each pouch costs $40, and assuming that Baldwin High School has 1,550 students, the school district would have spent a whopping $62,000 for the high school alone. And that doesn’t even include the administrative costs of buying and replacing lost pouches. The New York State Department of Education only provides $10.90 per secondary student for the purposes of enforcing the ban.
It looks like teachers at Baldwin High School think that the Yondr pouches are working. None of the teachers I sent Canvas messages to report having caught anyone using their phones in class. Apparently, some teachers have tricks to catch students who are using their phones. For example, when I asked Ms. Wilkins about how she catches students using their phones in class, she said “I know a student is using their phone when a student’s head is down and they are looking at their lap. Students also place their phones underneath papers on the desks to use them.” There are other ways teachers catch students using their phones as well. “Generally if a student is paying attention to something besides the lesson… most likely they are looking at their phones, ” said Mr. Kappel. In any case, Yondr pouches are being touted as the solution to the problems which arise from phone usage in the classroom. Whether students have their phones or not, at least they seem more engaged in class.
