With the growing popularity of cell phones, school districts in Butler County have had to adjust their policies regarding students’ cell phone use during school hours.

While some prohibit students from even having them turned on during school hours, others allow students to not only have them on but they can use them — as long as they’re not disruptive in class.

That’s the case in the Middletown City School District, which implemented a new policy this year giving high school students the ability to use their cell phones at lunchtime and in the hallways between classes.

“Cell phone use is a huge part of our lives today,” Middletown High School principal Carmela Cotter said. “Schools have become more flexible in regards to how to work with kids who need to have their cell phones. At the high school level, students often change work schedules. They need to coordinate rides after activities. It’s really important that they do have good communication with their parents and employers. Our cell phone policy has definitely changed over time, and for the better.”

In previous years, students were not permitted to have cell phones in school, but district officials realized the need to adapt to the times.

“Why fight something prevalent?” said Sam Ison, Middletown’s senior director of instructional leadership. “We can use it as a learning tool because it’s an interest that’s relevant to the kids. Why not pull it into instruction? Everything has a positive and a negative. Enhance the positive and diminish the negative.”

At Middletown, if a student is disruptive, the cell phone is taken away and can be retrieved at the end of the day. A second offense results in a phone call to the parents, and if the problem continues, the student is not allowed to bring the phone to school.

Very rarely are there repeat offenders, Cotter said, “because parents are supportive. They know they need to reach their children. It’s a good school-parent relationship.”

Other school districts, like Monroe and Lakota, prohibit students from having their cell phones on during the day.

Monroe Superintendent Elizabeth Lolli said the district deals with “maybe 10 incidents a year” in grades K-12, with the first offense resulting in detention and it progresses to a three-day suspension for a repeated offense.

When the final bell rings at the end of the school day, students can be seen turning on their phones to make calls and send texts.

“Our technology committee is working on coming up with ideas to positively use cell phones and other electronic devices as learning instruments,” Lolli said. “We don’t have a total handle on it at this point.”

That is the same road Lakota plans to head down, according to Assistant Superintendent Ron Spurlock.

“We know what a 21st-century classroom should look like,” Spurlock said, “but because of financial concerns and the amount of technology we have in our buildings, there’s a gap. Knowing that students are walking around with mini-computers in their hands, we believe there is a place for cell phones in the classrooms.”

And those students who have cell phones are getting younger and younger.

A study last year by Mediamark Research & Intelligence (MRI) found that 20 percent of U.S. children ages 6 to 11 own a cell phone, up from nearly 12 percent in 2005. The most dramatic increase, about 81 percent, has been among 10- and 11-year-olds.

Fairfield’s policy states that students in grades Pre K-6 who need access to a cell phone must have a registration form filled out by a parent. No registration is needed for students in grades 7-12, while students in grades 9-12 can use their cell phones during school hours in between classes and at lunchtime.

“Our philosophy is that it’s here and it’s here to stay,” said Dan Jeffers, technology and data coordinator at Fairfield. “It’s not going anywhere. The amount of time we spent dealing with the issue when it wasn’t acceptable to have those was huge. Our administrators were spending lots of time with discipline. For the kids, that’s their connection to the world. That’s how they function. They don’t know any different. For us to tell them they can’t have that, it just didn’t make sense to us.”

Karrie Gallo, the assistant principal at Fairfield South Elementary, said she’s not aware of any kindergartners, first-graders or second-graders in the building who have a cell phone. Yet, there are some third-graders and about 25 percent of fourth-graders who do own one.

Her 10-year-old son, Brennan, received a cell phone for his 10th birthday in June, and her other son, Ethan, 6, has already asked for one.

“I was surprised how many fourth-graders have a cell phone,” Gallo said. “It’s more than I thought, but I think the kids like it. It’s a very hot commodity. It’s normal for everyone to have a phone. It’s normal to have that constant access to one another.”

Contact this reporter at (513) 755-5113 or steven.matthews@coxinc.com.