Cell phones will no longer be omnipresent in the hands of students at Woodstock Union High School and Middle School (WUHS/MS) in the coming school year, which gets underway across the Mountain Views Supervisory Union (MVSU) district next Wednesday, Aug. 27.
Following extensive discussions among administrators, families, students and community members, WUHS/MS Principal Aaron Cinquemani in early May proactively implemented restrictions on the usage of smartphones and other digital communications devices, such as smart watches, by middle and high school students during the school day, effective with the start of the new 2025-26 academic year. Cinquemani’s action was prescient, given that Vermont lawmakers enacted legislation in a special session in early June that banned cellphones in public school classrooms. The legislation also included a first-of-its-kind-in-the-nation ban on schools using social media to communicate with students.
The cell phone ban and the implications of Act 73, Vermont’s newly enacted education transformation legislation, will be hot-button issues for MVSU administrators, teachers, students, and families during the upcoming 2025-26 school year. Other priorities on the agenda for the regional supervisory union include an in-depth investigation of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) platforms at WUHS/MS, as well as traffic safety enhancement at the middle and high school site in West Woodstock and the recruitment of a new principal for the Reading Elementary School.
The MVSU Board of Directors includes elected representatives from Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Plymouth, Pomfret, Reading, and Woodstock, and also includes an appointed representative of the Pittsfield School Board. Superintendent of Schools Sherry Sousa sat down with the Standard via Zoom on Friday afternoon for a look-ahead at the 2025-26 school year.
For more on this, please see our August 21 edition of the Vermont Standard.
