The policy at my school was that any "electronic device," be it a cellphone or pager, would be confiscated and held until the end of the school year. I had this happen to a (not yet modified) Radio Shack tone dialer.
I was approached by the principal while I was using my modified tone dialer on a pay phone in the hall and he freaked out a bit and I showed him it was for dialing stored numbers and he looked at it for a second and said “Ok. It’s just that it looks a lot like a pager… maybe be more discrete with it”
In the 80's I had a walki-talkie confiscated till the end of the year also. It "just happened" to be crystaled for the same freq the school narcs/maintenance used.
In most cases they are not, but you need to have a good relationship with your parents and they need to care enough to bother the school about it. Otherwise, they won’t listen to you, a child.
> In most cases they are not, but you need to have a good relationship with your parents and they need to care enough to bother the school about it. Otherwise, they won’t listen to you, a child.
It's more nuanced than that: there's shades of grey in there, not just black and white.
I had a good relationship with my parents, they cared a great deal about anything related to education and would keep involved with everything academic (even though my parents both never finished school at all, not even primary school). Most kids I was in school with had parents with the same outlook.
Telling my parents that I had broken a school rule would definitely get them involved immediately, but "playing with toys when you are supposed to be learning" is unlikely to win sympathy.[1]
The reason that the schools could hold things until the end of the year (mostly they held them for a week, at worst) was because if you complained to your parent that you were playing with a toy during a time when you were supposed to be learning, the parent with likely confiscate the toy permanently.
At least when the school confiscated it, you eventually got it back.
I imagine, even today, with most parents who care about their kids academic outcomes (surprisingly, quite a few don't), the conversation is likely to go like this:
K: The school confiscated my $TOY today. They aren't giving it back until year-end.
P: Why? Was it switched on/used/making/noise during class?
K: Errr ...
At that point, the kid is now in trouble with both school and parents. Only if the kid is reasonably certain that:
a) The parent doesn't care if they were not attending to the lesson at hand, and
b) The parent will call the school to get the $TOY back,
would the child complain to the parent.
[1] Of course, when I was in school you could take anything to school; you just couldn't play with it until a break in classes. I expect that the outrage now is due to confiscation happening not due to usage, but for simply possession of the toy.
The underlying legal theory is that schools are 'in loco parentis' and can establish rules while the students are entrusted to the school by the parents.
Because the loophole was you could get it back at any time if your parents came down to claim it. And (for me) it was always easier to get it back at the end of the year than to tell my parent, where I would still lose the item (via my parent's revocation) AND catch an extra punishment on top of it.
Probably one of those things where if the parent contacted the school, the item would have been returned but most kids didn't want their parents to know they had the item at school in the first place.
This probably has more to do with the fact that 30 years ago if you brought an electronic device into school it was probably relatively cheap and there was a decent chance your parents didn't even know about it. And either way it wasn't really a necessary part of your existence. Now it's a $1200 phone that is most likely the primary way your parents communicate with you between the time you're out of school (around 2:30 or 3 when I was in, unless there were after school activities) and they return from work.
I don't see how it wouldn't be legal. The school has a variety of responsibilities surrounding its students, going back hundreds of years. They aren't a 'guardian', but the school is entrusted with a child's safety, and has responsibility. For example, a school may tell a child to "be quiet" and "sit down" and "sit in this seat" and "why are you not in class", even forcing you to go to school.
The school is allowed to dole out punishments, such as detention or even denying access to the school itself. This isn't a normal "a bunch of random adults are around" relationship.
TBH, most people don't get the `in loco parentis` bit of school. It's maddening that there are comments from well-educated, smart and intelligent people in this thread who are wondering if it is legal for the school to dole out punishment to kids.
Look up the relevant legislation in your jurisdiction; dig deep enough and you will find either explicit legislation or case-law confirming that it is legal, usually with the phrase `in loco parentis`.
Any on the spot decision that needs to be made with regard to the child, the school can make it with no requirement for input or consent from the parents.
Trust me, you don't want it a different way, else one day you are going to be asking the school either a question along the lines of "Why did you wait for a parent callback before you took action?" or a question along the lines of "Why are you requiring my response to these questions every single day?"
Children don't really have property rights, and even if they did, courts have consistently ruled that the bill of rights is reduced in school settings.
> and even if they did, courts have consistently ruled that the bill of rights is reduced in school settings.
Courts have ruled that there are specific interests in school that meet the generally applicable (not special, weaker) standards applicable for permissible action where rights protected in the Bill of Rights are involved.
But establishing categories of and confiscating contraband is... not a disputed state power, in any case.
Children don't have property rights but their parents do and they own their children's things. If a parent went to the school and asked for the confiscated item that school would be insane to deny them.
They'd be insane to deny them because disgruntled parents can cause an incredible amount of trouble for schools, not because confiscating the phone when established by clearly communicated policy is actually meaningfully illegal.
Children own their stuff. Parents can control the child’s things like they control other aspects of child’s life. They give some of the control to schools.
What happens when child becomes an adult? They own all their stuff from before, the parents do not keep it. It can be complicated since parents let child use stuff, but anything given to or bought by the child is theirs.
> What happens when child becomes an adult? They own all their stuff from before, the parents do not keep it.
I think that parents basically "gift" their adult children their old things. At 17 years and 364 days a parent can take everything their child "owns" and burn it/throw it in a wood chipper with zero legal issues (concerning specifically the destruction of property anyway, burning/chipping some things will get you in trouble), however once the adult child has been informally gifted their old "belongings" there's no take backs without legal repercussions.
Things do get more complicated with things the child bought with their own money... I'm guessing the law would be more willing to accept that those things should belong to the child, but even if a 15 year old kid buys an xbox with their own money I doubt the cops would arrest the kid's parents for smashing it with a bat.
