The BYOD wifi being removed has already negatively impacted students across the county. On day one, I personally was unable to do basic things like looking things up on my phone or texting my sibling important bus information because there was no service in the school. This was never an issue when the BYOD wifi was a thing. 

Many classes require students to turn in work via Canvas or other similar apps; these apps allow you to take pictures of your work and then attach them to an assignment. However, doing this is impossible when students are unable to connect to the BYOD wifi. Already, I have heard other students tell me about how they were unable to do work for their assignments and are already behind in their classes because they currently do not have a school provided device, and the lack of BYOD wifi prevents them from doing work that they would normally be able to do on their phones.

In addition to this, not every student is fortunate enough to have a cellular data plan available. One of my friends is entirely unable to text their relatives, for example, for a ride, because they do not have service and there is no wifi for them to connect to. What would happen if there was an emergency such as a fire or an active shooter event that required students to be able to text their parents? They would be entirely unable to do so, and their parents would be unaware something serious was happening until it was potentially too late.

There is absolutely no sensible reason to continue to withhold BYOD wifi from students. While taking away the BYOD wifi prevents students from using their phones for messing around during class, it also prevents students from using their phones for legitimate educational purposes- something that has already had serious consequences for students within the first three days of school. It's clear to anyone who actually has to deal with the lack of BYOD wifi that this is an issue that needs immediate fixing before things continue to add stress to students. 

Attempting to funnel all schoolwork into school provided Chromebooks is reasonable, but it completely fails to acknowledge that such a thing is literally impossible. Some classes absolutely REQUIRE phones. Just now, I was unable to look things up as references for my art class because there's no service in the room and I have no wifi. This isn't a good learning environment, and I shouldn't have to take out my laptop and spend several minutes logging onto it solely to search up a simple reference photo- not to mention the countless students who don't even currently have school provided devices.

Removing the BYOD wifi was a horrible decision that should be reversed immediately, as it has caused issues for students and teachers alike- teachers are also unable to do the things I mentioned above, even on their own staff wifi, as I have heard from several myself. One teacher even told me they were unable to text themselves, despite being connected to the school wifi, because the firewall instated blocked it.

The sensible thing to do here is to reinstate the BYOD wifi and instead leave it up to the individual teachers to enforce stronger anti-phone policies in their classes when applicable; blanket banning BYOD wifi as a whole to attempt to shut down that discussion simply isn't working.