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Buxton School to Ban Smartphones for Wellness of Students

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Beginning next school year, Buxton School will no longer allow smartphones on campus.

This decision, though it was made for various reasons, mostly considers the well-being of students and community building. The private boarding school positions itself as a progressive institution with egalitarian principles that strays from the status quo and believes the ban is a necessary move.

"As part of the progressive ideal, we feel like the best teaching tool we have is the community that we make together every year," Franny Shuker-Haines, director emeritus of the school, said.

"It's a really powerful way for kids to learn sort of their effect and their power and kind of how they can make the community they are in better, and we feel that smartphones have increasingly distracted all of us from that project."

Teachers will also detach from smartphones by leaving them at home.

Students and families were notified of the upcoming policy change in early February and it will go into effect at the start of the upcoming school year in the fall.

The school will not be cut off from the internet, as computers will still be permitted along with non-internet-enabled phones such as flip phones or light phones.  If students are unable to access such phones, Buxton will provide assistance.  

"It's really about the way that smartphones, they're really designed for an immediate sort of action and reaction," Shuker-Haines said. "So we're trying to just slow that down a little."

She added that they are aware of a few other schools that are enacting similar policies.

Buxton is a small boarding and day college preparatory school for Grades 9-12. It usually has around 65 to 80 students with about 10 of them being day students who live in the region.

She explained that the smartphone ban has been in consideration for about three years. Progress was slowed when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the campus had to be shut down in spring 2020.



At the time, it wasn't possible because school was being conducted over Zoom. This year, Buxton officials felt that it has reached a new level of stability because the population is vaccinated and the omicron variant is hopefully on its way out.

The increased use of social media during the pandemic solidified the need to disconnect on campus.  On top of the stress that COVID has imposed, it is widely known that social media has negative effects on teens.

"The Surgeon General has said and there have been many articles around about how there's a mental health crisis among young people, particularly teenagers," Shuker-Haines said.

"And we feel pretty strongly that smartphones contribute to that mental health crisis and to people's sense of anxiety."

She added that the school wants to take a stand for what it believes — and others have backed up — is healthiest for young people. That is being in a community where they matter, where they are known by peers and adults well, and where they are living in the context of community.

And what was the reaction to the news? The older students have felt less impacted than the younger students and staff, parents, and alumni are enthusiastic about the ban, according to Shuker-Haines.

"It's kind of a mixed reaction, but people definitely coming around we had a ton of conversations about this since we announced it," Shuker-Haines said.

"And that's kind of a very Buxton way of doing things, we talk a lot about a lot of things."

While the school often tries to make decisions as a community, this was a decision that the faculty made, she said, because they knew it was the right thing to do.


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Williamstown Planners Advance Bylaw Proposals, Discuss Sweet Farm Road

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board last week advanced two of its zoning bylaw proposals to keep them on track for inclusion on the annual town meeting warrant and discussed what issues it should consider when considering a proposal it is tasked with considering.
 
One of the board-generated articles has been on the table for years: limiting the number of days a "primary dwelling unit" can be used as short-term rental to 90 cumulative days in a calendar year. The other is a more recent project of the planners: requiring installers of geothermal wells in the two Water Resource Districts to either use only potable water or prove their systems pose no threat to the town's public water supply.
 
Both proposals last Tuesday were sent to the Select Board, which will take a ceremonial vote to refer them back to the Planning Board for public hearings in March.
 
But those are not the only town meeting articles that the Planning Board will need to discuss in the weeks ahead.
 
The owner of the Sweetwood assisted living facility on Cold Spring Road has submitted a landowners petition to create an overlay district for the South Williamstown property that would allow conversion to multi-family housing. While the planners have no say over the content of the proposal, the board will need to host a public hearing on the article and likely will make an advisory vote to the May meeting.
 
And the Sweet Farm Road Homeowners Association plans to ask the annual meeting to accept Sweet Farm Road as a public way. By law, that request requires input from the Planning Board to determine whether the road design conforms with the town's bylaw and decide whether to grant waivers before passing the article to the Select Board for a public hearing.
 
At the outset of the Planning Board's Feb 11 meeting, Chair Peter Beck informed the group that the HOA asked to reschedule a planned discussion of the road acceptance request.
 
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