Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you
want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream,
my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron,
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subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your
smartphone or tablet, And again, thank you so much for
your support. Senate Bill fifty five, sponsored by Republican Senators
Mike Lee of not that one from Utah, but the
one from New Hanover County and Jim Bergen of Harnett County,
as well as Lisa Barnes of Nash County, encourages school
boards and charter schools to develop and enforce policies that
limit distracting technologies in classrooms. This is the Senate version. Okay,
this one was introduced earlier this month. The House has
its own bill and it made it out of the
what was it, the Education the K twelve Education Committee
that went through on a voice vote and now heads
over to the House Judiciary Committee. Very similar bills, little different,
but they're basically telling local school districts come up with
some policy, because while seventy seven of the districts already
have some policy, the rest do not. And I would say,
I don't remember how many there are total, how many
districts there are total, but there's probably about forty I
guess left that don't have a policy and they need one.
They need to have a policy, and the state isn't
like telling you exactly what it should be, but they're
saying it should, at a minimum, should prohibit students from using, displaying,
or having powered on wireless communication devices during instructional hours.
That includes cell phones, laptops, tablets, pagers, what's a pager?
Two way radios, and gaming devices. Schools will have the
flexibility to decide specific violations and implement consequences, such as
confiscating devices or instituting disciplinary action. Senate Bill fifty five
does provide some exceptions. Teachers could authorize the use of
devices for educational purposes. Also, exemptions may apply for medical
reasons or special education plans. Under the measure, schools would
need to define the consequences for infractions, which may include
confiscation of the devices or other disciplinary actions. So what
do you think do you like this approach. Should it
just be mandatory bans across the state in all of
the school districts. Do you trust the school districts to
come up with their own particular policies. And what of
this idea that the teachers are probably happy to ban them.
Maybe some are not, But maybe teachers are happy to
get those things out of the classroom. But it's the
parents who are, like, I need to be able to
call my kid whenever I need to, or they need
to call me whenever they need to. What do you think?
Seven oh four, five, seven eleven ten. Let me go
and talk to Peter first. Hello, Peter, welcome to the program.
Great name.
Speaker 2: What's up, hey Pete? Yep, can you guys?
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, sure can yeah.
Speaker 2: I would just say seth your your emailer Before this
probably hit the nail on the head. That's what I
was going to try to reference and just developing policy
number one has to be you know, at the top
of the of the ticket there for each you know,
whether it's district or county or state. And then you know,
I was just gonna add to that. You know, that's
a zero cost policy, right as if you have a
policy doesn't cost you, guys anything to implement it. But
if there was another out of the box thinking idea.
Have you ever been to like a comedy show and
they don't want you to record anything? So, yeah, your
cell phone in a little pouch.
Speaker 1: I've never had them do that to me, but I
know that that I've been to a comedy show. And
but the one it was actually went and saw Kevin
Hart when he came to Charlotte, and yes, yeah, so
I went to that show. Okay, yeah, but I don't
I don't think that they took our phones for that,
but I didn't see anybody recording. They did tell us
we're not allowed to record, and they said that you know,
somebody would come and kick us out if we did.
But I don't remember. I don't think they gave us
a bag, because I know they don't. They have like
bags or something that they will put your phones in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you just you know, with technology these
days and all that, maybe you know at three fifteen
when the bell rings, obviously these these little nea prene
pouches automatically unlock somehow. But you know, obviously there would
be a cost involved in that that probably wouldn't be
able to support every district. But that's where going back
to Seth's email and what you're saying we all agree with. Well,
I think as a parent, I agree with how do.
Speaker 1: They do the how did they do the Have you
been to a comedy show where they took the where
they took your phone?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay? And what do they do with it? Do you know?
Speaker 2: Well, you actually keep it. You put it in a
pouch they provide to you, and the phone or device
muscle in the pouch. They lock it with this special
plastic key, you know, and then on your way out,
the same people that handed you the pouch are sitting
there with a little buzzer and it just automatically unlocks
the thing, and you know, you dump the pouch into
a container that they recollected every single day.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: But if I'm going to bring my phone to school,
you know, I have to put in this pouch, which
it means I can't access it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it seems like that might I mean, yeah,
like that seems like a pretty easily applied technology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's already in it's already out there. Yeah, it's
an adoption opportunity. But again, policy number one, this actually
would cost the school's money. So I'm not advocating for that.
I'm just suggesting it's an idea that's already existing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know how that. I had
heard that there were bags, but I never knew how
they actually worked. So that's interesting. They all open it,
you walk back out and they open them individually, or
is it like a code that goes out and they
all open at the same time.
Speaker 2: The one I've had it opens be someone waves a
wand across it, right, and it kind of just unlocks it,
and kind of like at the cat at the register
if you're checking out a box or yeah something, and
there's like a little plastic tab that keeps it from
being stolen. You know, you have to cross this little
sensor somehow before it'll unlock the pouch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that seems like a pretty It
seems like a very low cost option. Again, but how
do you you know, where where does the funds come from?
Oh you know what, they could take some of the
American Rescue Plan money from the COVID pandemic. They probably
got a bunch of that'still laying around. Maybe they care
you go Peter, I appreciate the call, buddy, thank you.
All right. Seeah, No, it's interesting I didn't know the yeah,
because they just told us at the Kevin Hart Show.
They just said that they will kick us out if
they see any phones come on, which you know, and
maybe because it was in a larger space that they
couldn't they didn't have enough bags for the size of
that audience because it was a pretty big crowd, right,
I think it was at the I think it was
at Spectrum Marina. I want to say, hey, I don't remember.
It's been a while. Spencer. Welcome to the program. Hello, Spencer,
how are you doing today? Hey, I'm good. What's going on.
Speaker 4: I'm glad that you mentioned that they have a medical
exception to the rule for Kal's. There are many kids
that have diabetes and they have things like a continuous
glucus monitor attached to their body, and maybe they have
an insulin pump that has an imfusion system attached to
their body, and it's also communicating with their smartphone, the
blue tooth. And you put that phone in that bag,
it cuts off the blue tooth. The phone starts screaming
because it can't communicate with the devices.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, yeah, I think that's a reasonable exemption. Right now,
what would be the punishment if you are found to
be using your smartphone for non insulin pump related activities
during class like that would be you know, that would
obviously have to be spelled out like what the infractions are.
But I would I would venture to guess that the
student is not interested in having that smartphone or having
any punishment handed down on them because they you know,
they're using the smartphone as they're not supposed to be.
They don't want to lose it either, so you know,
especially if it's connected to some life saving diagnostic tool.
Speaker 3: That's correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, yes, Spencer, I appreciate the call. That
is in the that is in the Senate Bill fifty five.
It does provide that exemption for medical reasons or also
for special education plans. So if there's some if there
is some necessity right for the smartphone, then I think
reasonable people can agree. I hope. Let me just say
it that way. I hope reasonably people could agree. But
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who you are. Visit creative video dot com. Got a
message on Twitter from Mandy. It's a Pete tweet. She says,
last year, one of my nephew's teachers had a basket
at the front of the room. The kids were to
drop their phones in the basket and then they could
retrieve them at the end of instruction. People overcomplicate things. Yeah,
that is the low tech solution, I think. Right, you
have a box, you have a basket, you put it
at the front. It's like, everybody put your phones in.
And then if you here's the thing though, if you
get caught with the phone, right, if you don't drop
your phone in the basket and then it goes off
or you're using it, you get busted using the phone.
What are the policies, then that's what the state is
telling all of the school districts to figure out. Right,
come up with some policy, have a policy of some
kind that clearly spells out the punishments, and this way
you can enforce your band because there's no point in saying,
everybody drop your basket or your phone in the basket,
and then you catch people with their phones, they suffer
no ramifications for it, and then pretty soon nobody's dropping
their phones in the basket because there's no penalty for
ignoring the rule. Right, Jeff says on the subject of smartphones,
Am I the only one who thinks that whole story
of the guy locked in the Oh, that's funny. I
was just talking to Pam Warner about this. Am I
the only one who thinks the story of the guy
who got locked in a storage unit for four days
until he found his phone to call police? Could he
not make a voice command to have the phone call out?
I know most smartphones have that function. So Jeff is
talking about this story some guy. The story was like
what yesterday or something where some guy got claims at
least that he was locked in a storage unit for
four days, that his girlfriend locked him in there, and
he had dropped his phone somewhere in the storage unit
and he couldn't find it, and so he was in
there for four days without food or water. You cannot
survive three days without water. You will like that, You'll
you'll like you'll be dying. Okay, So I don't know
what what was really going on there, but the whole
that whole story stinks to me. It does like there's
so many gaps in that story that I need information on,
Like I need to see an image of the storage unit,
like was it really full? Where was he? Because how
do you get your how Like I'm assuming you went
into the unit and I'm assuming it's a garage door
pulled down unit, right, But maybe not. Maybe it's a door.
I had a unit that was like that. It was
just a closet basically, So maybe it was a door
so it was easily closed. But a lot of the
units that I've used or seen over the years, they
have the open mesh up on top. Right, it's like
a grate. It's not a it doesn't go all the
way up to the ceiling. So I am not sure.
Like I need to see an image of the of
the unit. And if it's a garage door, how did
he get all the way into the back, I assume,
and then not be able to get out before his
girlfriend closes the door down on him and is able
to put the padlock on the thing. Again, I'm assuming
it's a padlock, but I don't know. Again, I need
a lot more information. I don't understand about the tech either.
Now regarding the voice commands, I have all of my
stuff shut off, so like I don't get notifications, I
don't get the constant dings and beeps and whistles and
stuff on my phone. I shut all that crap down
like six seven years ago. I do not need to
be Pavlov's dog, Right, I don't need to hear every
beep for every single notification. I get literally thousands of
emails a day. I don't need to hear every single
ding and bing and whatever, So I shut all that off.
I don't want the voice command either. I don't want
to talk to my phone. I do not want to
tell it to do anything I don't want. I don't
need some uh, you know, some some digital servant. I
don't even know how I would do that on my phone,
and I don't want to know. Although I've never been
locked in a storage unit, so maybe I say that now,
but maybe, yeah, maybe I find myself in a storage
unit locked, I will, you know, figure out how to
get the phone now? And how did the phone get
lost in the storage unit in the first place? All right,
if you're listening to this show, you know I try
to keep up with all sorts of current events, and
I know you do too, And you've probably heard me
say get your news from multiple sources. Why, Well, because
it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've
been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and
it's a website, and it combines news from around the
world in one place so you can compare coverage and
verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground,
dot news slash pete. I put the link in the
podcast description too. I started using ground News a few
months ago and more recently chose to work with them
as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how
stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature
shows you which stories get ignored by the left and
the right. See for yourself check dot ground, dot news
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only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News
as they make the media landscape more transparent. Now let's
talk to Skip. Welcome to the show, Skip.
Speaker 5: How are you hey, Pete. It's coal Fall Skip Man.
I'm messing sometimes it's the crime stuffers.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, you're doing well.
Speaker 5: Monroe. Yeah, I'm doing well. I hope you are.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It's funny you were mentioning about that storage unit, because
I have a storage unit there. It's where I keep
my business stock.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is Cooper storage is the name of the
place I was looking up during the break, Cooper Storage
on or off a old Charlotte Highway in Monroe.
Speaker 5: That's correct, That is correct. That's a very well traveled
area and the storage unit is very busy. So what
I noticed I was talking to my wife last night
about is terry. There is no way that this guy
could have been stuck in there for four days in
that storage unit. There is They are sealed off on top,
so there's no heating or mesh or anything like that.
And you are correct. It is a pull down garage
door that I gotta tell you. It is not easy
to pull down rapidly. And then once you pull it down,
you have to line it up just right to slide
the metal bolt into the frame. Then you put your
padlock on it. So let's say she was able to
do all that before he could get out. If I'm
stuck in there, I am beating on that door continuously
because it's not a huge facility and there's a lot
of activity, a lot of traffic. Do there, somebody's going
to hear you.
Speaker 1: What are the walls? Are the walls concrete in between
each of the units or are they metal?
Speaker 5: No, they are metal. But now where they adjoin back
to back, I believe and I don't know because I'm
full up back there, but I believe that sheet rock
right between the two units. Now, of course, you break
through that sheet rock, you're going to be in another
locked unit, right. But my point to my wife was,
if I'm beaten on that door, you're going to be
heard at the Dollar General across the street or the
little shopping mall that also has a lot of traffic.
If you're beating frantically on that metal door with something
your hands, even somebody is going to hear you in
four days.
Speaker 1: So right, So this is why I say I need
more I need more information to understand what happened because
according to the story here this is from WBTV and
it's based on the Monroe Police Lieutenant Morgan Malone and
the nine to one to one call. Police say the
man and his girlfriend had been arguing before she allegedly
asked him to retrieve something from the back of the
storage unit. So he climbs inside, goes to the very
back of the unit, and that's when she pulls the
door down and locks him. And according to the lieutenant,
the storage unit was described as being a hoarder's paradise.
As soon as the officers opened up the door, stuff
started falling out, and the further they opened it, the
more stuff fell out. Police believe the crowded room and
complete darkness made it difficult for the man to find
his phone and call for help. Well, okay, so if
he had climbed over like a whole bunch of stuff
to get to the very back of the unit, and
that's when she closes the door down, and now he's
in darkness, and I don't know, is it completely sealed off,
like where there would be no light coming in whatsoever.
Speaker 5: I believe it would be dark in there. I do
believe that with the door down, it's a pretty good
fitting door. And if he was climbing over stuff. It
takes me about ten or fifteen seconds to get my
unit locked when I reach up and grab the thing.
So it's possible. It's possible. But I got to tell
you this supposedly happened on Thursday. I was at my
unit on Friday getting stuff for my jobs, and I
drove around in there and I didn't hear anything. If
I would have been locked in there, trust me, you
would have heard me. You've probably heard me in the studio.
Speaker 1: Uh skip, good to hear from you, buddy. I appreciate
the call. Thanks for the intel.
Speaker 5: Yeah man, thanks all right, so yeah thanks Sea.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like I said, I got a lot of questions.
And the guy said he had no cell phone service inside,
so he was only able to call nine one one.
And according to WBTV, they say, if that's true, then
that would be in his phone would not have been
lighting up or making noises or vibrations from notifications. See
and on this I cannot speak because like I still
get but I have them all turned off, so I
don't even know. And where how did you lose track
of your phone? Like did you set it down so
you would then go climb in Why would you have
just put it in your pocket or something? Or maybe
he set it down on something in the front of
the unit and then started climbing, or maybe it fell
out of his pocket or something. I don't know. Like
I said, there's there there are gaps in the story,
is all I'm saying. All right, So now let's talk
to Walter about smartphones in schools. Hey Walter, what's up?
Speaker 5: Hey Pete.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, I don't have anything as dramatic as the
story story, but just a couple of observations. I would
be one of those old crotchety guys that would think
that the schools ought to just not allow the cell
phones at all. But if they're going to have to,
and if the parents put pressure on the schools to
allow it, then step number one is, beginning of every
school year, every parent has to sign a cell phone
form that lists all the rules in regulations that their
children will be expected to comply with. Number two, that
they would actually be a financial penalty, a fine as
it were, for multiple for violations of the cell phone rules.
And last, but not least, after you have so many violations,
the phone is confiscated and it will only be returned
if the parents come to the school to get it.
Speaker 1: Well, I will say, like the first reaction that probably
most people would have to the financial penalty would be
something like, oh my gosh, you know, you know, fines
that would be too draconian or whatever. But because that's
what I started thinking. But the more I thought about it,
as you were, just as you were talking, I was like, well,
but Charlotte does that very thing with our alarm systems
in our homes where if you get you get false alarms,
they start finding you.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I don't think it's that big a deal. I mean,
so it's if the kid, you know, violates rule, it's
ten bucks, and then the next time it's twenty bucks,
and the next time it's fifty bucks, and next time
they take the phone and the parents have to engage
by physically going to the school to get the phone back. Yeah,
that you start inconveniencing the parents. They're a whole lot
more likely to hold their kids to those rules. Just
one person's opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we could also do like a walk of
shame kind of thing where they would take the tablet
and bang it on their head as they walk through
the whole the parent I'm talking. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 6: Well, that's too much violence there, Okay we Walter.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the call, buddy, Thank you. Now, the bills
right now at the legislature are just telling the school
districts come up with policies, write them out, and everybody
knows what the penalties would be, right, so there are
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that'll last a lifetime. The ban on smartphones in schools.
There's a band working its way through the state legislature
up in Raleigh. And also the guy that got locked
in a storage unit for like four days and then
finally found his smartphone. They arrested his girlfriend, who apparently
allegedly locked him in that storage unit, charged her with
attempted murder and king. So so yeah, those those are
the topics on the table. Let's head over to the phones. Hello, Vince,
welcome to the program. What's up Vince?
Speaker 3: Hello Pete? Hey, Hello Pete. I enjoy your show.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 3: I was just wondering my cell phone wouldn't last for
the battery wouldn't last four days unless I guess maybe
if it were turned off he could have it could
have lasted that long. But it seems pretty odd that
he would have fully functioning phone after four days.
Speaker 1: That's a yeah, this is one of those questions that
I need answers to. Also, how does the phone keep
its battery life that long? Unless the guy has like
some maybe he's got like a lot of memory in
the phone. It's a brand new phone, and so they
haven't Just like I I think that the phone companies
and all these apps, they keep doing updates to their
apps which take up more and more and more memory
on your phone, and then it eventually breaks your phone
because it keeps uh draining the battery so fast. So
I don't know, Yeah, like I would need to know,
like how old is this phone? Why did the battery
last so long? And supposedly he did not have any
cell phone service and that's why he wasn't getting alerts
or anything like that, and he couldn't find it and
it wouldn't work or whatever. But I'm I'm not sure
how that would work. But also wouldn't the phone keep
looking for cell service right and.
Speaker 3: Using the battery while it was doing exactly right?
Speaker 1: And so I don't I'm not clear on that either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, well I just bring it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's a good question. I don't have an
answer for it.
Speaker 6: Vince.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the call. It's yeah, that's that's one of
the things that that don't make sense to me. How
did the phone survive now? I will say in the
WBTV story, after receiving the call on Monday, WBTV reports
officers forced their way into the storage unit, discovering the
man inside in a state of dehydration. Now, because that's
what I said, you can't live longer than three days
without water. And he claimed on the nine one one
call that he hadn't had anything to eat or drink
in those four days. So him being in a state
of dehydration, then that tracks. So he was in there,
or unless he was dehydrated before he went in there
and then was only in there for a shorter period
of time. I don't know, but it seems like the
other thing is like, how do you know you've been
in there three days or four days? How would you
know that? Or did they just piece that together after
the fact, because when he called nine one one, he said,
I've been locked in a storage unit for about a week. Now,
how do you know you've been in there a week?
You can't tell the passage of time or day, or
maybe he could somehow, maybe it was based on temperature.
Right when it got cold, he knew it was nighttime
or something. Yeah, a lot of questions. I got lots
of questions on the cell phones in school. Washington Examiner
had this story a couple of days ago. A full
twoenty twenty three Pew Research survey found that seventy two
percent of high school teachers say cell phone distraction is
a major problem in their classrooms, and the poll is
one of several which have shown cell phone usage in
classrooms has been a problem even if students believe cell
phones help them in the classroom. By the way, any
student that is telling you that they need their cell
phone in their classroom because it helps them do their work,
like I, I'm not buying it. I'm not buying it
unless you're unless your assignment in this in the classroom
is up your smartphone and do this task. Then I
don't see how really right math? Oh I needed for
my calculator. Maybe, but even then, I'm not so sure.
Do they make you buy calculators separately? I don't even know.
I haven't even seen a calculator for sale on the
shelves like anywhere I'm trying to think. I don't even know,
Like that was a requirement when I was in college. Well,
when I was in college, I took statistics, and then
I took it again, and then I took it again,
and then I took it again, and the fourth time
I passed. So the other three times I dropped the
class because I was doing so poorly in it. Because
the professor of math at went Through University would not
allow us to have graphic calculators, so they made us
memorize all of the formulas. And I couldn't remember the formulas.
It's just the different side of my brain. I could
not remember all of the different formulas to figure out
the stuff. I knew the concepts just fine, but I
could not remember the formulas. I couldn't apply them. And
then I went over to York Technical Community College for
a summer class that transferred. The credit transferred, not the grade,
but the credit would. And the first day they're like,
a requirement for this class is a Texas Instrument ninety
one calculator graphing calculator. And I got a one hundred
and twenty in that class. All right, that'll do it
for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I
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thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.