Last school year students at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School got a taste of having the privilege to use their cellphones during nutrition and lunch. However, that was taken away because of  students’ misuse of the new privilege.

Since then many students have complained and argued that the cellphone ban should be lifted. Some students have even attended the School Site Council that meets every month to share their opinions and ideas on the issue.

One student’s transgressions shouldn’t determine what rules every other student has to be limited by.  There are a lot of teens who, unfortunately, make fun of and bully other teens or peers. There are many TV shows and movies, like “Mean Girls,” that make light of burn books and bathroom stalls covered with gossip and students bad mouthing their peers. DPMHS is not exempted from the list of schools with bullying issues.

A student used the school’s initials for an account on social media to target DPMHS students. It could have just been a coincidence, not a result of being able to use cellphones at school. The student could have easily made the same exact account for the same bad intentions in their home, with or without the cellphone privilege enacted.

Teacher-librarian Tammie Celi and English teacher Paul Viskanta have a creative idea to allow the use of cellphones in classrooms for educational purposes. There are many students who would greatly benefit from this idea.

Some students who are in science teacher James Morrison’s classes could study more comfortably in the classroom with the addition of their favorite songs if they were allowed to use their iPods or cellphones to listen to music.

Newspaper and yearbook students for example, could take pictures of school activities and post them almost immediately on the school newspaper or yearbook’s social media. Since journalism is becoming a technology based career, it’s important students get the experience of that here, seeing as we are a journalism and communications school.

Many math students could also use their cellphones as calculators if they don’t own one. Higher math classes require expensive graphing calculators, and students could download free apps instead of buying or borrowing a one. English students could also benefit by using their cellphones to look up vocabulary words if there aren’t enough dictionaries to go around.

With ideas like Celi and Viskanta’s it is strange that the School Site Council isn’t addressing the issue, instead they’ve pushed it back to be discussed some other time. Principal Deb Smith says that teachers have been meeting to create a policy that is clear for everyone, including parents. She wants the new policy to follow LAUSD’s policy as well.