By Michael Coughlin Jr.
During its regular meeting, the Revere School Committee invited Chris Bowen, Principal at Revere High School (RHS), to provide more information on addressing the school’s cellphone and attendance policies and how its student support system will evolve.
The first topic up for discussion was cell phones. “It is our vision for this coming school year that we are creating an environment where students, families, caregivers, [and] teachers, experience phone-free learning experiences while they’re in class and doing school at Revere High School,” said Bowen.
It should be noted that the electronic device policy at the high school level allows students to carry their phones on their person. Still, they must be turned off at all times, except in the cafeteria during their assigned lunch period, according to the 2024-2025 Guide to Revere Public Schools for Students and Parents/Caregivers.
Penalties for violating the policy range from a staff member asking the student to power off their phone and put it away to students, in severe cases, having to give up their phone at the beginning of the day to an administrator for 10 school days.
Bowen noted that a lot of time had been spent thinking about day-to-day steps for administration to ensure that the current policy was enforced at the classroom level.
Specifically, he indicated that school and community messaging was beginning to roll out that week, which described the rationale for phone-free learning and how phones impact kids’ development.
Slides are also being created for teachers so there is consistent messaging for students. Bowen also mentioned a plan for grade-level assemblies on the first day of school so “teachers aren’t the ones carrying the burden of making sure that attendance policy and cell phone policy, and that stuff — we want to be the ones that are the first leaders and speakers of them,” he said.
Phone lock boxes have also been purchased for classrooms so confiscated phones can be stored safely.
Other aspects Bowen mentioned include an “all-hands-on-deck” approach for administration to help teachers struggling with students not complying with policy, consistent language for teachers to help enforce the policy, and more.
After speaking about the cell phone aspect of the presentation, Bowen paused for questions and comments from the committee.
Committee Member Aisha Milbury-Ellis asked for more information about the all-hands-on-deck approach.
Bowen responded that teachers can use an email lists to contact the school’s administrators and administrative assistants when students refuse to give up their phones.
“We don’t want teachers to have to fight with kids and stop the lesson and do all of that in class. The idea is to just send an email to RHS Admin,” he said.
Milbury-Ellis also expressed her satisfaction with the administration leading the charge, as it makes it clear to the students that teachers are simply doing what they are told by enforcing the policy and are not being seen as the “bad guys.”
Committee Member John Kingston echoed this above point, saying that the late Tony Mattera, who served on the committee before passing away, had a notebook stressing the need of “taking the teacher out of the equation as much as possible” and to “put it on the admin.”
Kingston was also complimentary of some of the other steps the administration is taking to enforce the policy. He said that Mattera had many of the same ideas in his notes.
“I think it’s great. Tony taught for 30 years, knows a lot more about teaching than I do, and for him to say those things and you to say those things, it puts me in a good place,” he said.
Following some other questions and comments about cell phones, Bowen began discussing attendance plans.
“Our vision for the school is that we have a culture where people, students, caregivers, [and] teachers, see being on time [and] being on program as essential to what it means to be on track to a successful high school experience,” said Bowen.
Three outcomes have been created through faculty working groups for attendance to be implemented this school year.
These outcomes include defining role-specific responsibilities for attendance improvement, utilizing truancy intervention for those who are chronically absent, and using an in-school truancy intervention for kids who are coming to school but might be skipping or coming late to class.
Further, Bowen talked about messaging plans and how research shows that when families are notified about how their child’s absences stack up to the average student, it “increases families’ handle on their students’ attendance.”
Moreover, there are plans for caregiver awareness campaigns that include information such as missing two full school days over a month “sets a student up to be significantly off-track from graduation in a way that parents don’t realize,” according to Bowen.
Also, RHS is looking to redefine unexcused versus excused absences. Essentially, just because a parent calls in and says their kid is not coming to school does not excuse the absence.
Bowen also spoke about reinstituting attendance points. “So when students are off program, when students are late to class, when students are late to school, there is an accrual of points that they earn that will kind of put them in a spot where, one, they sort of are owing time that they need to make up, assignments that are missed in that setting,” he said.
“As well as who is in good standing and what that means; can you practice? Can you play? Can you attend clubs? Can you participate in school activities if you’re not in good standing in terms of attendance?”
Lastly, Bowen discussed updates to the student support structure, something that was a big emphasis last year.
“It is really our desire that the people in our school community, students, teachers, caregivers, and administrators experience our support team process as a way that we can leverage relationships, that we can collaboratively problem solve to support students when they’re in trouble so that they can demonstrate the resilience that we know our kids have,” he said.
Before last year, Bowen indicated there were 240 student support teams, now consolidated into five. Student support teams are a resource to assist students better. For more information, visit https://rhs.reverek12.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=4105719&type=d&pREC_ID=2496054.
Over the last year, there have been weekly support team meetings, professional development and coaching sessions, work to develop the student support team handbook and more.
Consistency across the teams is a big theme going into this school year. “My hope is that we’re — if you think about last year, going from 240 configurations to five — my hope is that this year we’re going from these five support teams to really functioning with like one support team process,” said Bowen.
Moreover, there has been work done to develop routines for how faculty request support in certain situations and that they are consistent, increasing the range of social-emotional and engagement supports so teachers can implement them at the classroom level or have the information to make the correct referrals and more.
At the end of the presentation, the floor was again open to questions and comments. Vice-Chair Jacqueline Monterroso had asked if the school was exploring adding hall monitors in reference to one of the attendance outcomes.
However, in response, Bowen mentioned that the outcome focused more on how hall monitors collaborate with other staff, like assistant principals, and how multiple infractions are dealt with rather than needing more bodies.
Bowen made a closing statement focused on attendance to close out the more extensive discussion about these topics.
He said, “I think people are often set on the fact that there’s not a failure due to attendance, means there’s no absent policy. We have an attendance policy; there are implications for missing class, there are natural consequences, and school developed consequences for those that we are putting in place whether it’s detention or whether it’s this idea of being in good standing or not.”
“I think that it would be helpful for us as a school if we as adults can get on board, on the same page that there is an attendance policy… I think it is somewhat detrimental to our efforts when the talk is that there’s no attendance policy.”
To view this presentation in its entirety, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsB53BrVcsM&t=953s and skip to 14:33.
