The Ontario government is poised to crack down on cellphone use in schools with an announcement coming Sunday, a government source confirmed to CBC Toronto.
The province will also be tightening its policies around vaping in schools, the source said. Stephen Lecce, the province’s education minister, will share more details on the “comprehensive” policy changes Sunday morning, according to the source.
Details of Lecce’s announcement were first reported by the Toronto Star.
“It will have teeth,” the source said. “It’s something the minister has been focused on for a long time.”
The measures will make Ontario a “leader in this space,” they added.
A spokesperson for the minister would not confirm the details of Sunday’s announcement when contacted by CBC Toronto.
Karen Littlewood, the president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, said while she agrees vaping in schools is a problem, she was surprised to hear of the possible move on cellphone policy. While more support is needed for enforcing cellphone rules in school, she said she fears the new plan would put more burden on teachers to do that.
“I fear that what’s going to happen is it’s going to be more policing by teachers and less teaching,” she said.
“This should be actually a consultation, talking to students, talking to teachers, talking to unions, talking to trustees, talking to school boards, and to come up with a plan together.”
The announcement comes after four major Ontario school boards sued some of the largest social media companies to over their products, alleging the way they’re designed has negatively rewired the way children think, behave and learn and disrupted the way schools operate.
The public district school boards of Toronto, Peel and Ottawa-Carleton, along with Toronto’s Catholic counterpart, are looking for about $4.5 billion in total damages from Meta Platforms Inc., Snap Inc. and ByteDance Ltd., which operate the platforms Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok respectively, according to separate but similar statements of claim filed in March.