SCHOOLS RECONSIDER CELL-PHONE BANS

Drug stigma is fading as students and parents rely on them to stay in
touch.

While waiting for buses at Cherokee High School in Marlton yesterday
afternoon, clusters of students could be seen chatting away on their cell
phones.

For years, pagers and cellular phones were banned in almost all high
schools because the phones' beeps signaled one thing: drugs.

But as the phones have become crucial links for busy families and as
shootings such as the killings at Columbine High School have frightened
parents, schools throughout the region are reexamining cell-phone policies.

The Lenape Regional High School District in Burlington County is one of the
few districts that has adopted a policy allowing the roughly 6,000 students
in its three schools, including Cherokee, to carry cell phones to school
while strictly forbidding their use during academic hours.

"Right after Columbine, my mom got me a phone," said Denaire Butler, 17,
who stood in a hallway at Cherokee while checking in with her uncle on her
cell phone. "My mom said just in case anything ever happens, I can get
through to her."

Loraine Lord-Morgan, a technology and business teacher at Cherokee, often
supervises students in jobs during the afternoon.

"It's a good feeling to know that if my daughter's plans change, she can
call me, and she won't be stranded," said Lord-Morgan, whose daughter,
Alison Morgan, attends Cherokee. "In light of what happened in Columbine, I
think a lot of parents feel strongly that they want to be able to get ahold
of their children."

At Radnor High School, where the phones are barred, many school officials
said they may have to reassess the policy. They know many students are
carrying phones to check in with working parents and arrange after-school
rides.

"I don't have a real problem with that as long as it is only after school,"
said Robert Baker, Radnor principal. "We can't have the phones ringing in
the classroom or the hallways.

"Probably schools are going to have to rethink their policies. It's not
commonplace but close to it."

In Philadelphia, where an assistant principal was shot inside a high school
last fall, school officials said they were not planning to change the
policy prohibiting students from carrying cell phones.

"The origin of the policy is based on the fact that beepers and cell phones
were found to be disruptive when they went off in classrooms," said William
Epstein, executive director of the district's Office of Government
Relations.

He added that the shootings at Columbine already had occurred when the
cell-phone calls there were made.

But even school officials adamant about the ban - such as Elaine Novet,
assistant principal at Pennsbury High School in Fairless Hills, Bucks
County - have had to make exceptions.

A student requested permission to carry a phone so that his pregnant
girlfriend could call him when she went into labor, Novet said. She allowed
him to bring the phone to school, but only if he left it in the office. She
promised to alert him if his baby was about to be born. (The child was born
while school was out.)

Laws in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have prohibited students from carrying
beepers onto school property since the 1980s, when the devices were
primarily associated with drug dealers. Students with medical conditions
that might cause emergencies and those who volunteer for fire companies or
paramedic squads are the only exceptions. But neither state has specific
regulations about cell phones, leaving each district to decide its own
policy.

At Pennsbury, Novet said she still was not convinced the phones were needed
at school.

"I don't really feel the kids need the cell phone, even after school," she
said. "We have a lot of pay phones inside and outside the school if the
students need access to a phone. There is always an adult administrator
here for all the extracurricular events. . . .

"I'm afraid if we allowed students to have phones in the building, with
1,700 kids, the phones would be ringing, and they would be calling each
other back and forth."

Novet said the school accommodated parents who needed to get messages to
their children, agreeing to pull students from class in emergencies.

"In this district, it is still a 'no' - on school grounds, at
school-sponsored activities, and on buses or other vehicles provided by the
districts," Novet said.

Some students at Cherokee said that cell phones rarely went off during
class, but that the phones could be heard and seen in the hallways and in
the lunchroom on occasion.

"A lot of kids have cell phones at this school," Lord-Morgan said. "Rarely
do I hear a phone going off during class. I think our policy allows the
students to be responsible adults. [The phones] may be going off
occasionally in the halls, but I don't hear it, and I would not say it's
abused."

Cherokee student Gina Dadetto, 17, said it was important to have her cell
phone so she could keep in contact with her family. She recounted how one
afternoon she was supposed to baby-sit her 12-year-old cousin and was late
getting home. She was able to call and tell him that she would be there.

"He was scared, and I was able to call and reassure him that I would be
home soon," Dadetto said.

While Cherry Hill High School East bans all electronic devices, assistant
principal Leonard Terranova said he had heard from a few parents who
disagreed with the policy.

"I've heard from parents who say, 'I want my child to have access to us,' "
Terranova said. "People have been sensitized to violence. They've lived
through the emotional and traumatic incident that was Columbine, and they
saw and heard that the phone was used, and it was a helpful situation."

But he cautioned that it was possible that cell phones could inadvertently
set off detonating devices.

Terranova said that the school revisited all disciplinary rules
periodically, and that he thought a healthy discussion of the cell-phone
policy would occur when it next came time to review the rules.

"I think Lenape's solution is very logical," he said.

The policy adopted by the Lenape Regional board last week allows students
to carry the phones to school but requires them to turn the phones off and
place the phones in their lockers before the first bell. The phones may not
be removed until the final bell.

"I don't think anybody wants to take away students' right to communicate
with their parents," Terranova said. "If students can put them in their
locker and keep them there, it offers access but keeps the nuisance factor
down. . . . We do have to deal with the fact that people use these things
now like they are breathing air."

As the students filed onto buses after school yesterday at Cherokee, George
Vesa checked in with his mother on his cell phone. She told him to get on
the bus because his flying lesson had been canceled. Usually his parents
pick him up and drive him to pilots' school.

"My son really needs his cell phone," said his mother, Elizabeth Vesa. "He
calls and checks in with us every day, whether he goes to his job or his
pilot lesson. It gives me a lot of comfort for him to have the phone and
know where he is."

Inquirer staff writer Susan Snyder contributed to this article.