Schools Ease Off Cellphone Restraints

Such concerns were not unfounded. In May, improper text messaging figured into a cheating scandal on the Advanced Placement U.S. history test at vaunted Severna Park High School in Anne Arundel County.

Montgomery was among the last school systems in the area to ban cellphones in middle schools. Up to now, students could carry one only with a waiver from the administration.

Fairfax County schools dropped their cellphone ban in high schools just after the Sept. 11 attacks and extended the privilege to middle schools in 2003. School systems in Alexandria and in Howard and Loudoun counties, among others, allow any student to have a cellphone provided it is off and out of sight. Calvert County allows cellphones when parents register with schools. D.C. officials leave the decision to principals but are weighing a districtwide policy.

Elsewhere in the nation, large, urban school systems tend to have more restrictive rules on cellphones, and small, rural districts are more permissive, said Reggie Felton, director of federal relations at the National School Boards Association.

Cellphones are banned in New York City public schools. Detroit and Miami schools allow students to carry cellphones but not to use them. Chicago officials leave the decision to principals.

Geri Shapiro, a parent at Herbert Hoover Middle School in Rockville, said she purchased a cellphone for her son, who is in middle school, at the same time she bought phones for her two children in high school because it was cheaper to get a three-person plan. Most kids in her neighborhood, she said, acquire their own cellphones "as they hit that bar mitzvah age" -- or, 13 -- which she said is about the time parents begin leaving children unsupervised at after-school activities.

"It's indispensable for being able to get a message to your kid," she said.

Montgomery high school senior Ben Moskowitz doesn't remember anyone carrying a cellphone when he was in middle school. But this spring, when he visited middle schools while campaigning for a seat on the school board, "a vast number of students had cellphones with them -- probably a majority of them," Moskowitz said.

Some families had taken the trouble to sign waivers, but many more simply had their children hide the phones. Principals mostly looked the other way in what board member O'Neill termed a "don't ask, don't tell" policy.