It鈥檚 hard to forget the panicky voices of the students and teachers trapped inside Columbine High School. Barricaded in classrooms and closets, they used cell phones and classroom telephones to call police and even Denver-area radio stations, pleading for help.
School staff elsewhere in the country certainly haven鈥檛 forgotten. Classroom phones have been a hot topic for teachers and administrators in recent years, and the horror of the Columbine killings last spring has given these discussions new urgency. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 even have an intercom system,鈥� says Deryl Nissen, principal of the 150-student Jeffrey Elementary School in Osceola, Nebraska. 鈥淭he only way I can communicate now is running up and down the hallway.鈥�
Jerry Smith, Spring Corp.'s senior market manager for education markets, says teachers and administrators once believed that phones in class would be a nuisance. 鈥淔ive years ago, when I would talk with a superintendent, he would say, 鈥榃hy do you need to have a telephone in the classroom? It rings in the middle of class. It鈥檚 a distraction.鈥欌��
Now, says Smith, some educators have changed their tune. In a direct response to the Columbine tragedy, California high schools in AirTouch Cellular鈥檚 service area accepted 10,000 cellular phones donated by the company this summer. The phones reach emergency phone numbers only. California Governor Gray Davis asked other cellular-phone companies to match the gift and equip all the state鈥檚 high schools with classroom phones.
For some teachers, phones are a convenience as well as a safety measure. Donna DeKraai, a 3rd grade teacher at Hillcrest Elementary School in Brookings, South Dakota, uses her phone to alert main-office staffers that she鈥檚 sending them a sick child. And if one of her students doesn鈥檛 show up at school for a few days, she calls their parents to find out why. She also coordinates class presentations by outside speakers via the phone--a strategy that works a lot better than sending notes 鈥渇lying back and forth,鈥� she says.
Classroom phones, DeKraai continues, are less disruptive than an announcement blasted over the intercom. And, she says, there鈥檚 always voice mail. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 have to answer the phone.鈥�
Other teachers say classroom phones are handy instructional aides. David Schoales, formerly a history teacher at Peoples Academy in Morrisville, Vermont, says that when his students studied the stock market, they conducted phone interviews of local brokers and business executives during class time.
The Edison Project, a for-profit company that manages 51 public schools, sees phones as important teacher tools. The New York City-based company has outfitted all its classrooms with phones, according to Gaynor McCown, Edison鈥檚 vice president for corporate strategy. One popular use: a homework 鈥渉otline鈥� for parents to listen to a recorded message from teachers discussing daily student assignments.
There are no statistics on the number of classrooms with phones. But officials in the country鈥檚 three largest school systems-New York City, Los Angeles,v and Chicago--say they are rare.
That could change with the growing popularity of the Internet, which has won over some skeptics who doubted the benefits of technology in the classroom. 鈥淚t鈥檚 opened people鈥檚 eyes,鈥� says Carol Utay, technology coordinator for the 7,300- student Jessamine County district in Kentucky. 鈥淭hink of how many people a few years ago said, 鈥榃hat would you use the Internet or e-mail for?鈥�''
New federal discounts for telephone cabling and service in schools also appear to be fueling interest. In Kentucky, every district鈥檚 technology plan since 1992 has called for a telephone handset in teachers鈥� rooms. But according to state officials, few schools installed phones until the government discounts became available last year as part of the so-called 鈥淓-rate鈥� program, which is best known for providing 鈥渆ducation-rate鈥� savings for Internet access.
For some, the scarcity of classroom phones proves that teachers aren鈥檛 treated like professionals. 鈥淭here are many schools where the professional work life of teachers is not where it ought to be,鈥� says Joyce Epstein, director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. 鈥淲ith the year 2000 coming up, the telephone problem should have been solved by now. We shouldn鈥檛 be having this conversation.鈥�
