A bill that would fine students who brought beepers, pagers and cellular
telephones to school drew opposition Monday from students who testified
that school officials should concentrate on stopping crime.

Nicholas Christensen, Jennifer Andrews and Jonathan Rathmann, students at
the Las Vegas Academy, testified via videoconference they have never had a
class interrupted by a beeper or phone. Rathmann said as many as half their
fellow students used the devices.

Assembly Bill 307, if passed, would expand on a law that prohibited the
possession of such devices on school grounds to allow for the fines and
forfeiture of such devices.

"School police have other things to do, like trying to stop violence and
drugs," Andrews told the Assembly Education Committee.

The bill was introduced by Assemblyman Doug Bache, D-Las Vegas, a middle
school teacher in the Clark County School District. Bache said that the
devices caused disruptions in the classroom and that some penalty was
needed to enforce the 1993 law making their possession at school illegal.

Bache's bill would require the forfeiture of a cellular phone or beeper in
every case and set a fine of $25 for the first offense. The second offense
would bring a $50 fine, a third offense a $100 fine and subsequent offenses
a $200 fine.

Bache noted that a provision in the law allowed students to carry a device
in special circumstances if they received permission from the principal. He
said that students did not take advantage the procedure.

If a pager or cell phone were taken away from a student one day, the device
would be back in his possession the next day, he said.

The law banning the possession of beepers, pagers and cell phones was
enacted because of a concern that some students were using the devices
during school hours for unlawful activities such as drug deals, Bache said.

Christensen said the proposed law would cause more problems than it would
solve by making busy school officials deal with cell phone citations and
confiscations.

Legitimate instances occurred in which students needed to get messages from
parents, he said. He noted the school's policy was not to deliver telephone
messages to students from parents who call the office.

Christensen said the bill should be amended to require a fine only if a
pager or cellular phone rang or beeped and disrupted a class. He said his
parents gave him a cell phone to use in case of an accident or other
emergency.

"I think the bill is essentially punishing parents for communicating with
their children," he said after the hearing. "In today's day and age, there
are a lot of important things going on, and beepers aren't hindering
anything."

Rathmann argued that fines would not deter illegal use of the devices by
those few students who used them for such purposes.

None of the students said they were aware of the policy allowing principals
to authorize students to bring the devices to school.

Committee Chairman Wendell Williams, D-Las Vegas, appointed a subcommittee
to work on the bill and bring it back for a possible vote next week.

He expressed surprise that school districts have not told parents that an
exemption from the cellular phone, pager and beeper ban was available.