Kansas Schools Now Collect Phones at the Door – Spends $180K On Smartphone Lockers

At least one Kansas district is projecting $150,000 to $180,000 just to equip secondary students with individual phone lockers, according to the Wichita Eagle. The state provided zero dedicated funding. Every dollar comes from local budgets.

Districts choosing fabric locking pouches — think Yondr, the magnetic-lock system concert venues use to keep audiences present — face an estimated $30 per unit. Statewide, the Kansas Division of the Budget put that figure at roughly $13.4 million if every student received one, according to the Lawrence KS Times. Lockers require a steeper upfront investment. Neither option came with a state check attached.

Legislators passed the policy. The price tag was someone else’s problem.

www.gadgetreview.com/kansas-schools-now-collect-phones-at-the-door-spends-180k-on-smartphone-lockers

It doesnt look like returning the devices has to be immediate or convenient. Heres my proposed plan:

Ban devices entirely. Any item discovered gets confiscated, labeled, and placed in a bin in the office (achieving the “secure” location requirement of the bill.) Students are permitted to label their item. Items are available for pickup weekly at the end of a district-wide midday “value of education” parental education session.

Labelmaker: ~$200/school

Labels: $0.01/item

2 hrs labor weekly: 38×2×$50=$3800/district/year

Value of inconveniencing parents enough to care: priceless.

Look valid, crappy idea. So now the director is responsible if a child is stuck somewhere and can’t reach it’s parents while going to school or coming from school.

They do it like me in ye olden days of the 2000s:

• Alert the teacher
• Go to the school secretary office and ask for the phone

That was before enshitification. They dropped pur kid at a random bus stop two weeks before the end os school, bus had issues, we had to go fetch them 2km away. They warned nobody and counted on kid to warn their parents… In this case you expect them to do what ?

I was expected to walk my own ass to school.
I did it by foot and bike.
And 2km is (depending on age) not much.

A warning to impacted parents would be neat though.

It depends, really? 2km of well maintained sidewalks and walkable streets is very different from 2km of no sidewalks and unprotected highway crossings. The school I went to as a kid specifically banned walking home because we had the latter and a kid had got hit and killed because of it.