GULF SHORES — With the end of fall semester in sight, students, teachers and principals at Gulf Shores City Schools spoke with Gulf Coast Media on progress surrounding the FOCUS Act, a state law prohibiting the use of cellphones in public schools.

Principals at the middle and high schools have agreed that numbers are relatively low for the first semester with the law in place.

Gulf Shores Middle School (GSMS) has had 27 incident reports in violation of the FOCUS policy so far this school year. There are about 635 students at the school currently.

GSMS principal Jamie Hill said last year's cellphone use policy at the school, where students had to keep their cellphones in backpacks during the school day, seemed to have helped students prepare for the switch this year.

GSMS sixth-grade math teacher, Angela Kirby, said many of the incidents reported are "by accident" where a student has a phone in his or her pocket and forgets to put it in their bag.

Some of her students have decided to leave their phones at home as "there's no risk there."

Hill said many parents have embraced the new policy. The middle school's policy is to take phones to give to parents even in accidental situations, mostly to remind students it is state law.

"We feel like we're documenting every incident so we can stay progressive with it, because it's not a one and done," he said.

Phones are to be in students' backpacks and powered off the entire time a student is on campus according to the FOCUS policy.

The school's FOCUS policy details that the first report results in a warning conversation and the student's phone is held in the main office until a parent can pick it up. On the second offense, a student has on campus suspension (OCS), also known as in school suspension (ISS). The third time a student is caught with a phone, results in two days of OCS. Fourth time is one day of out of school suspension. A fifth time escalates to a defiance or failure to follow directions.

"It's really, in our opinion, no longer a cellphone issue when you're doing it for the third, fourth or fifth time," Hill said.

There have only been two-time offenders at GSMS and no one has had to go into OCS.

Benjamin "Benji" De Melo, an eighth-grade student at GSMS, said he's noticed a variety of opinions towards the cellphone ban. Most students are not fond of it but many decided to comply to avoid getting in too much trouble.

"When you get your phone taken up, your parent has to come get it," he said. "So, after school you might not have it and you might also be grounded when you get home. It's like a lose-lose when you get your phone taken up."

One of the bright sides of the new law, De Melo has noticed, is improvements in his grades, which he noticed even last year when the original cellphone policy was put in place at the middle school.

De Melo's not the only one who's noted more productivity in classwork, as Hill feels the cellphone ban has and will benefit student grades and class participation overall.

"I do feel like there's more engagement, more face-to-face conversation, more interaction where you actually talk to people," he said on the school environment this semester so far. "Naturally, the distractions are fewer so the focus is greater. That has to lead to better academics."

He feels that students will eventually get to a point where they don't even realize they don't have their phones on them all day.

Kirby said the ban might encourage healthy habits surrounding cellphone use. She said a main part of her job as a middle school teacher is encouraging good habits from personal interactions to learning practices.

"You just build these habits and that's one of them; you don't necessarily have to be on your phone every second," she said.

She also felt that separation from phones encourages student achievement.

As a teacher, she has students keep their backpacks against the wall and they are only to take what they need for the day to their desk, so the cellphone-in-backpacks and FOCUS policies have not changed much of her classroom life.

"I will say, the students at this school have responded very well, the numbers show it," she said. "Just the attitude towards it — I think they understand that this is here for a reason, and I think they're used to it because as a school we were ahead of that curve of not allowing them to use it in the building."

WHAT ABOUT IN AN EMERGENCY RESPONSE?

Hill said the schools keep the parents informed on any emergency situations underway. The campus regularly practices emergency drills and lockdowns to ensure students and staff are aware of proper responses.

Cellphones are not required for contact during this time as the school has two-way radios, classroom phones, cameras throughout the school and open communication with parents about safety conditions.

"You don't need a cellphone to engage, you don't need a cellphone to respond," Hill said. "… That's how I was raised, that's how a lot of us were."

Kirby said on the ban, "I know there's concern about cutting off communication, but … that has not caused a communication breakdown between the students and the parents. They can always still reach each other."

CELLPHONE BAN AT GULF SHORES HIGH SCHOOL

At Gulf Shores High School (GSHS), principal Tim Webb said a total of 94 incidents have been logged since the school year began. 78% of those are one-time offenses. The high school has a total of 896 students enrolled.

Like the middle school, many of these violations come from students accidentally having cellphones in their pockets.

The high school policy is attached to a time frame, rather than being on or off-campus as many programs have out-of-classroom assignments. Students are to have their devices in their backpacks from 7:50 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Unlike the middle school, GSHS did not have strict rules around cellphones before the current FOCUS policy, as it was mostly up to teacher discretion of when cellphones could be in use for class activities and when they would have to be put away.

Webb noted that some students often push the limits and walk into school on their phone and put it in their backpack right at 7:50 a.m. and catch up on what they missed on their phone as soon as the 3 p.m. bell rings.

"At least we're reducing screen time for a while," he said.

GSHS twelfth-grade student, Portia Hollis, said she was personally in favor of the cellphone ban, though she remembers several people at the beginning of the school year being unhappy about it.

Webb agreed saying, "We got a lot of comments early on where the kids were really dreading it, they thought it was terrible. But just a few days in they were like, 'it's not that bad.'"

Hollis said she has felt more productive this semester, and she has noticed students interacting with each other more frequently.

"The first day of school, I remember sitting in the cafeteria with our dual enrollment class and everybody was actually talking," she said. "I knew if we had our phones, we would have all been on our phones."

AP chemistry teacher, Jason Hill, said he's noticed similar positive reactions to the new policy.

"The kids don't have that added distraction of having that crutch to fall back on of always having that phone," he said. "I actually believe that the kids have communicated more. I have seen a very much improved set of communication skills."

Another positive side effect of the cellphone ban Webb has noticed is a decrease in students congregating in bathrooms during the school day.

"They'd all text each other and want to go to the bathroom at the same time and they'd be in a fight or doing something silly," he said. "We've seen a large reduction in that."

He said there have also been more strict rules surrounding the use of hall passes, which also seems to have helped decrease bathroom gatherings.

For general next steps for the FOCUS policy, specifically in communication, both principals mentioned the school system is looking at different applications that can be downloaded to school-issued computers and iPads for student use.