Hypothetical Senior arrives at Legacy. We’ll call him George. He keeps his grades up, and joins NHS. He buys his lunch from the cafeteria and stops at the StuCo store to get a senior shirt. One day he forgets his ID, then gets caught sending a text in class. Total cost for George’s week: $48.25. While nothing is free in life, the constant fees and costs students pay drain both the student’s and the parent’s wallets.
It makes sense to have students pay for the return of cellular devices when the rule clearly states such devices are not allowed on campus, but $15 is too high a price. When school shirts cost $10, but a student has to pay essentially one and a half shirts to get their phone back, the likelihood of them wanting to show off their bronco spirit becomes slim. A more appropriate price for the cell phone is $5. Sure $15 ensures they will not break the rule again, but the lower cost could raise the sale of PTA’s cookies, school shirts and cafeteria lunches as the students have more cash to spend.
Prices should stay constant and advertised correctly. Posters around the school show the cost of a new ID for five dollars, but this is incorrect. At the beginning of the year IDs with a lanyard were only five dollars, but starting in the middle of the second week of school however the price changed to six. Yet the signs still read the former price. To avoid any confusion or students putting any fines on their accounts, these signs must be corrected or the fee lowered.
Administration or the district may say all these fees are necessary to support programs; the money collected from cell phones goes toward crime prevention services, the ID money for the machines which make them, but hiking prices or maintaining high ones should not be a means to this end. In this struggling economy anyone needs money any way they can get it, but if the district’s money comes from the misfortunes of students this collection is unjustifiable.
Not all fees are ‘wrong’, maybe not even the price of said fee, but the excessive ways the fees are applied to the student body prevents outside business spending by these students. If the school wants to be fair to students, and potentially increase various shirt or other spirit wear sales, two things must happen. First the district must re-evaluate the different ways they collect money from students, and second there needs to be a district-wide change on high charges such as cell phone fees.
Midnight • Dec 4, 2009 at 9:35 am
I agree the ID policy is lame, but it makes sense if you think about it. We do wear them in real life. Mostly pinned to your shirt, but then at my old job we didn’t have to pay for them, they were handed to us and told they were manditory for us to wear. I think that if the ID policy is all the uniform they are giving us though, its lucky. We could all come to school wearing the exact same thing to ensure that no one not apart of our school gets in, but they have not done that yet. All they do is the ID policy.
On the cell phone issue though. I believe most teachers enjoy taking up phones, even when students are not texting.
Last year, the one time I got my phone taken up, I had been wearing pants with small pockets and my phone had honestly fallen out of my pocket onto the floor. I leaned over in my seat picked it up and was putting it back in my pocket when the teacher snatched it out of my hand. I tried explaining what happened to her, but she wouldn’t listen. I even told her to check my messages on my phone as proof that I was not texting because, at the time, I did not have texting on my phone. It cost to text and I had not started texting yet. But the teacher ignored my pleas and told me I could get the phone after class. I didn’t have fifteen dollars, so I had to borrow 15 dollars from a friend, whom probably never got paid back, to retrieve my cell phone because I am not supposed to drive without it, in case “something” happens. Then when I went down after class, my phone was not there. The teacher honestly waited until the end of school to take my phone down so I had to wait for her to get there with it. I agree that students should not text at school, though sometimes I am guilty of it, but when a student is truly not texting and can prove it, then I believe the cell phone should not be taken up and sent to the book keeper. If they are not texting, but the phone is out a teacher can take it up for the class period and return it after class. Not cost a student fifteen dollars when there is a way to prove innocence.
Ferman • Nov 30, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I love that there is so much discussion on this subject, And since I started the rigmarole after Will wrote the article I will make some comments on the discussion above.
The reason the cost is $15 is because it is a FINE. If you run a red light should it cost $75-$150 because you ran a silly red light? No. But it DOES and that money is gone! It is a FINE because you have done something wrong. You are not “buying back” your own property. You are paying a FINE to get your property back after breaking the rules. Kind of like a car in the impound.
Now, for ID’s? “Blah blah blah, I don’t wanna wear an ID, I lost my ID, ID wearing is stupid.” No, it probably doesn’t cost $5 to make an ID, but the machine that makes these ID’s cost something up front, it didn’t just appear in the library. The money from ID’s goes to pay for that setup. Now, I pose a question. If you lose your drivers license or state ID, do you have to pay for that? Of course you do! I believe it is $10 or $20. You pay $5 for a school ID that is required. If you don’t want to pay for a lanyard, get a piece of yarn, or dental floss or whatever as long as the ID is worn in the proper place. I love where I work and honestly think it is a safer place because of the ID policy. By the way, I am on my first ID for this year and can show you my original ID’s from every year legacy has been open.
Hope that helps you guys stay off the phones in class and learn to read an analog clock (because you really should know how to do that) and wear your ID!
Sorry for the rant, but I love good web 2.0 interaction!
P.S. Ms. W, I am not sure who you are, but THANKS!!!
Ms. W • Nov 20, 2009 at 11:03 pm
So, I can afford a $200 (at least) I-Phone. An mp3 player. Gas for my car. But a $10 watch is a strain. Sell crazy someplace else. And here’s a new and interesting fact. Eventually, not today because it would be lame, you are going to have to follow someone’s rules. Go to a grocery store after school and see how many adults are wearing their REQUIRED work ID’s. Rules will keep you employed one day. If you get used to following them now you will be much better off. Mr. Ferman, you are awesome. And if you can’t now, never learned, or have forgotten how to read an analog clock…well that’s not something to brag about.
Anjel Holdahl • Nov 19, 2009 at 10:47 pm
I agree with Michele, I don’t see how the IDs cost near $5 to make, it’s crazy!
and with the cell phone charge. It is prohibited, think about how many times some people get their phones taken up, the charge may as well be $150 to get it back. Then, the price would be more startling and students would then be less likely to use their phone in the classroom.
Ferman’s right, if you care that much about keeping time, get a watch. If you can not read analog clocks, learn. If you aren’t willing to do that, they make DIGITAL watches too!
THEN, you can check the time wherever you are, it is not just limited to school. Oh, how handy it is to own a watch (because, it doesn’t stop working when you leave school, ya know)
Michele Stricklin • Nov 18, 2009 at 11:31 am
I agree with Mr. Ferman about buying watchs because they are only $15 or even $7 and they last for years. They might be ugly but helpful. There are time that i check my phone for the time but we all know that we are also checking it to see if we have a message as well….right.
I also agree about the $15 because it is absurd that the shcool is making students pay for somthing they already own…also does it realy teach the kids a lesson about not texting. I can assure you that the same people that get their phones taken up are going to get them taken up again. We teens need to learn how to stop relying on the new technology and remember all the lessons our past teachers and our parents and peers have tought us. We need to be patient and respectful to our teachers/.
Lanyards need to be free because the cost of a weak peice of plastic and a plain black string shouldnt even be the total cost of $5 let alone $6. 🙂
Kymber • Nov 16, 2009 at 10:42 pm
The cell phone price is ridiculous. $5 maybe $10 is OK but $15? I don’t even have that much in my bank account. Sure students shouldn’t be as rude as to text in class, and if they do I agree that there should be a consequence but paying that much is just silly. It’s like buying back your own property. Also the payment for IDs is dumb. IDs are Mandatory. If they (administration) want us to wear them THAT badly they should be the ones to pay for them (at least the first one.) I understand making them pay for multiple IDs but the first one should be given to us. And they shouldn’t make us pay for the lanyards either. If they’re required to be on a lanyard they better be the ones to pay for it because I’m not wasting a dollar on a piece of string.
editor1 • Oct 29, 2009 at 7:51 am
But Ferman watches make me look lame…oh wait. 🙂
~Will
Blake Burch • Oct 29, 2009 at 12:15 am
While I disagree that people are losing the ability to read analog clocks (it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how and remember it for life. It’s like reading cursive. Hardly different from print, and it still serves the same purpose.), I do know that I’m just as guilty of pulling my phone out to check the time.
Mr. Ferman, you can’t honestly expect a student to go out and buy a watch. We’re just as unwilling to spend cash on an “easy fix” as the school district is. I mean, they could have spent money on clocks that don’t break; clocks that tell time accurately, no matter what *cough digital wall clocks cough*, but instead, we’re forced to cope with what we have. We the students cope by occasionally pulling out our phones to glimpse at the time. Frankly, there isn’t anything wrong with that. Then both students and the district are operating under the same mindset. “Deal with what you have and make the most of it. It’s not worth spending extra money to fix so small an issue.”
Not to mention that the phone policy is difficult to enforce anyway. Phones are starting to become our all-in-one devices, our lifelines. It’s almost less productive to prohibit them from being used. However, that’s a different discussion for a different day.
Ferman • Oct 28, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Hey Kayla, I have a three word answer for you, and it is one I have said to every student who says that they are “checking the time.” “Buy a watch.” 🙂
Kayla Kindley • Oct 23, 2009 at 10:17 am
I understand that the whole texting in class thing is rude, but sometimes we really aren’t texting. We may lie about and say that we aren’t but its true. Most of the time when i pull out my phone in class i’m trying to see what time it is, because in this day and age we dont use dial clocks anymore and we are slowly losing our ability to read them. It’s one thing to have your phone out all class, but to just glance down for a second or two isn’t that big of a deal. I think teachers should chill out on that. I mean if a girl has her hand in her purse for over five minutes then yeah i’d get mad too. But hey all mighty maestros, take it easy for a little bit.
Ferman • Oct 22, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I guess the one option you have left out here is the most obvious…DON’T USE YOUR PHONE IN CLASS! That is the simplest way to lessen the fees you mention. Yes, I suppose $15 is a lot of money, but it seems to me that many students do not understand the degree of disrespect involved with using a cell phone during class.
Detach for a moment. You will live without your phone for a mere 8 hours. The texts you receive and the messages that come in will still be there at 2:30. The inability to live without it is actually scary to me. Why do people feel the need to be connected 24/7?
It is bad enough that I have to sit through movies with people texting and answering phone calls, but to have someone do it while I am trying to educate them is appalling and downright rude.