Southern Delaware high schools craft their own phone policies

With schools vary in their cultures and teaching approaches, schools in southern Delaware have approached phone policies differently particularly at the high school level where students are more mature and responsible for their decisions.

Brandywine High School and the Smyrna School District are among the latest schools to implement cell phone policies for the upcoming school year separate from the legislative pilot project.

At Sussex Central High School, there is no school-wide policy on phones, but a few classrooms have implemented their own rules.

“The teachers at my school, we have the autonomy to create our own cell phone policies,” said Jeff Gartman, who teaches media and technology. “The administration gives us that freedom to make our own decisions and they trust us to do what’s best for our classroom.”

A number of teachers at Sussex Central use phones as a tool to foster discussions or facilitate research among students. Yet, after 20 years of teaching, Gartman recognized the devices can also pose a distraction that needs to be addressed in his classroom.

“It piles up to lost time, lost engagement and getting kids being less productive and the whole environment being less effective,” he said. “Personally, I have been struggling with this for years, trying different ways of managing it and I was just not successful with really fighting off the distraction that the phones are to students when they have them in their possession.”

What works for him and other teachers in his building is eliminating cell phone access, a policy he started last spring. This decision prompted him to purchase a hanging storage organizer with little pouches. Each pouch is assigned to a student with their name for every period throughout the day.

“Students come into my room and there’s a pouch hanging on the wall with a bunch of individual pouches. They’ve got their name on one of them. They come in, they put the phone in there,” he described. “I’ve even got it rigged up so they can charge their phone while they are in class, about two minutes before the bell rings at the end of class I allow them to come get it.”

After two months of implementing the policy, despite initial concerns, he now feels accomplished and pleased with the positive feedback from parents and students. He has noticed a noticeable improvement in his students and the overall classroom environment.

“For the most part taking the distraction away just added to the whole environment and kids were more productive, less distracted, and got more done,” said Gartman.

State Sen. Paradee says the phone pouches test pilot may not be ready in time for this school year since the state Department of Education is just drafting its regulation. He says the goal is to have the funds available for schools by the middle of the school year.

He encourages parents, guardians and caregivers to give the test pilot a chance. “My message to all the parents, grandparents, caregivers: hang in there, give it a shot and we’ll work through this.”

Changing standard procedures for evaluating and treating patients with suspected stroke has led to improved access to lifesaving stroke surgery across the state of Delaware and should inform triage and treatment nationwide, according to research released today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery’s (SNIS) 21^st Annual Meeting.

In “Direct From the Field Bypass to CSC Improves Timeliness and Likelihood of Thrombectomy for Patients with Emergent Large Vessel Occlusion,” the members of the Delaware Stroke System worked with the state’s emergency medical services (EMS) director to change the way that paramedics in Delaware evaluated individuals for suspected large vessel occlusion, increasing the number of patients who were immediately flown to comprehensive stroke centers for thrombectomy. These changes were implemented across the state in 2023. During the first full year of implementation, 100 patients were flown directly to a comprehensive stroke center (CSC), hospitals with certified neurointerventional specialists on staff who can perform thrombectomies, bypassing the local primary stroke center (PSC). Of those patients confirmed to have a target vessel occlusion on imaging, 79 percent underwent thrombectomy. In prior years, that percentage was just 52% when patients arrived via inter-facility transfer. These patients also received thrombectomy an estimated 2-3 hours earlier than if they had presented to the local PSC first.

Strokes are often caused by a large vessel occlusion (LVO), a blood clot that blocks a large blood vessel, cutting off significant blood flow to the brain. Nearly two million brain cells die every minute a stroke goes untreated, therefore the faster patients with this kind of stroke receive thrombectomy -; a minimally invasive procedure that uses a catheter to reopen blocked arteries in the brain -; the better their chances are to survive and to live a life of limited or no disability.

Many patients live far from comprehensive stroke centers. Therefore, stroke patients are sent to primary stroke centers first, which have fewer stroke resources. If these patients are experiencing a severe stroke, they are often then rerouted to a comprehensive stroke center. This delay in treatment can put patients at risk for long-term disability or death from stroke.

Implementing this new evidence-based screening and routing patients straight to comprehensive stroke centers has saved lives. Every stroke patient deserves access to lifesaving treatment, no matter where they are. We’re thrilled these procedures are allowing more people in Delaware to thrive after stroke and hope further systems across the U.S. will follow suit.”

Thinesh Sivapatham, MD, interventional neuroradiologist and associate director of the Comprehensive Stroke Program at Delaware’s Christiana Care health system

What questions do you have about the 2024 elections? What major issues do you want candidates to address? Let us know.

Delaware’s U.S. Sens. Chris Coons and Tom Carper are urging members of their party to support Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president.

President Joe Biden on Sunday announced he was withdrawing from the race after mounting concerns over his age and ability to win against former President Donald Trump. Biden endorsed Harris to run in his stead as the Democratic nominee.

Coons and Carper joined U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough in New Castle County on Monday morning to educate veterans on how to claim disability benefits.

Coons, a close friend of Biden and campaign co-chair, said he was speaking at a forum in Aspen, Colorado on Sunday when he saw he missed a call from the president. Audience members began to gasp as they saw Biden’s letter posted ro social media indicating he was ending his reelection bid.

Coons said Biden’s decision was “selfless and historic.”

“It’s my hope that my colleagues and others around the country will give him the accolades that he so deserved, as the most consequential president of my lifetime,” he said. “Someone who came into office in the middle of three incredible crises. A global pandemic caused, in part made worse by its mishandling by his predecessor, that ultimately took a million Americans’ lives; a deep economic recession and crisis caused by that pandemic; and a crisis of democracy.”

Media reports of senior aides managing the president’s schedule to shield the public from fully seeing the toll his age had taken has dogged the president for months. WHYY News attended a “Communities in Action” forum for Delaware state, local and community leaders in April. Biden addressed the crowd just before WHYY was allowed access to the event. White House personnel at the time said it was a surprise visit from the president.

Coons disputed claims that Biden has been “bubble wrapped” by his top aides, pointing to rallies, press conferences and network interviews Biden has conducted since his poor debate performance nearly a month ago. He did not address any time period prior to the June 27 debate.