Ann Arbor schools cut off wireless access for students using their own smart phones, other devices

She said the immediate reaction from parents has been positive and the district will work with people like substitute teachers and other outside workers who have legitimate needs for the wireless access.

“We know this is great for many people, but there are some that legitimately need to get into a wireless system,” Margolis said.

A leader of the district’s Parent Teacher Organization Council said the move would help keep students from finding their way around filters and firewalls blocking social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter during class.

Donna Lasinski, the 2011-12 chair of the district’s PTOC, said it’s hard to know if students are specifically using those sites during school time but she wouldn’t be surprised to find students were using their own devices to access them. However, she said she was concerned that the new restrictions would limit students’ ability to use their devices for educational purposes as well.

“Students themselves are relying more and more on personal devices to do research in schools,” she said. “I’m not sure how that will affect student usage of educational sites.”

Jim Jabero, a manager at the Sprint store at 1336 S. Main St. across the street from Pioneer High School, said he sees a lot more students getting smart phones than even a year ago.

Jabero said most of the students getting the devices are in high school and are being upgraded on their parents' cell phone plans. However, he said he thinks the biggest distraction isn’t accessing the Internet or social networking sites but text messaging.

“Text messaging is much more distracting in class than Internet browsing,” he said. “I guess you can surf the web, but the thing with smart devices is they’re so accessible to Facebook. You can just click a button and you’re on Facebook, so I guess that can be seen as distractive too.”

The district might be able to avoid needing more bandwidth space by limiting the number of users on the network, which could lead to some potential savings.

Lasinski said she thought the decision is a good one because it will allow the district to speed up connections for employees without having to buy more bandwidth. She said she hoped limiting the number of users on the district’s wireless system would increase teachers’ ability to use the web in their lessons.

“Teachers may be using those resources a bit more and it would be a shame to see that progress canceled for teachers trying to use it for instructional purposes,” she said.

The concerns about cyber-bullying are part of the district’s proactive approach to bullying, Margolis said.

She said she didn’t know of any specific instances of cyber-bullying occurring on devices while students were in school, but said it wasn’t worth taking the chance.

“We’re not naive enough to believe it’s not happening,” she said.

Ann Arbor school board Trustee Christine Stead said limiting the wireless access will be a way to keep children safe from the potential harms of cyber-bullying.

She said the changes might inconvenience some people, but eventually it will be appreciated.

“As a parent, I think anything we do to increase the safety of our kids is a good thing,” Stead said. “I do think, with social media and all those things, there are ways we don’t even know that can put them at risk.”

Kyle Feldscher covers K-12 education for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at kylefeldscher@annarbor.com or you can follow him on Twitter.