Ohio district high schools to lock up students’ phones all day after problems with staging fights, bullying, and productivity [Video]

Akron Public Schools in Akron, Ohio, decided the district will expand a policy that locks students’ cell phones away through the duration of the school day after a pilot program garnered overwhelmingly positive responses.

The Akron Board of Education approved funding for the Yondr program, the name of a company that produces magnetically locked cell phone cases often used in comedy clubs and other private venues.

According to ABC News 5 Cleveland, educators had grown weary of problems that arose from excessive cell phone usage in Akron schools.

“Fake social media threats have kept us very busy chasing nonsense,” the school district’s director of security, Don Zesiger, said. “Staging fights and filming fights was a big problem for us. And then social media, bullying, and things that happened throughout the day.”

Pat Shipe, president of the Akron Education Association, said that students would even use phones to coordinate and let non-students in the building.

“We …