[throwaway50603]

As a student (over a decade ago) I had hundreds - maybe even thousands over the 13 years of education, actually - of phone calls with my parents, siblings, grandparents, uncle, friends etc about various stuff I was doing after school, during school (and sometimes instead of school).

I'm sure the school office would've loved to handle all the calls for us, lol.

[germinalphrase]

I'm not even arguing kids shouldn't have a phone at all (OP is talking about during school hours), but even so - why would you ever expect the office to do that? Communicate with your parent/child before school to make a plan or establish a routine for meetups as was done for decades before smartphones.

It's a fig leaf rationale to keep phones in children's pockets during class.

[throwaway50603]

You said that if there is a legitimate need they can call the school office or have the office call the parents - so I'd expect the office to handle it.

For myself it was mostly that parents could simply call me 5 minutes before they picked me up for my dentist appointment (which I had at least monthly for 7 years due to having braces) instead of me waiting somewhere for who knows how long because there was a traffic jam (and missing more schooltime than necessary).

They could simply call me/send me a SMS and ask me to pick up my younger siblings when they had unexpected work and couldn't make it in time - but since they respected me as a person, I had to confirm that I will do it and don't have other plans. Obviously, if I saw the question only after school that'd be way too late and they would have to force me into it instead of simply asking the grandparents if I said I can't.

Because why the hell shouldn't we use modern technology if it's available to us? Thanks to it we were flexible, and we enjoyed it.

Yeah, I also used the phone during class. Because the lessons were shit. Though we had a few very engaging teachers and even though I had zero interest in their subjects, I never used phone in their class.

Schools have to improve, taking phones away is just bandaging the symptoms.

[germinalphrase]

Yes, I also appreciate the increased flexibility modern comms afford us, but we do indeed have differing definitions of legitimate need.

[throwaway50603]

And that definition is not up to either schools or teachers, but parents and potentially the students (depending on the parents).

[germinalphrase]

Clearly, that is not True.

[throwaway50603]

I'm not sure what you mean, it's clearly true where I live.