North Mercer District R-3 Public Schools
22931 MAIN STREET P.O. BOX 648
MERCER, MISSOURI 64661
660-382-4214 (phone) 660-382-4236 (fax)
www.northmercer.k12.mo.us (home page)
Superintendent: Wade Hall School Board: Teri Noe, President
Principal: Aimee Huse Heath West, Vice-President
Kailer Stevenson, Sec./Treas.
Matt Davis, Dana Stark
Ervin Taff, Makella Hagan
Dear Parents/Guardians,
We hope that your Summer Break is going well! School will start back up August 20 and that date will be here
before we know it! Our staff is excited to get the students back into their classrooms so that learning and innovation can
begin! As it states in our Mission Statement, we aim to inspire our students to learn a diversity of life skills in a safe
environment as they learn to become respectful and productive citizens. One of the ways we can achieve a higher level of
respect and maximum productivity from our students is by limiting distractions to their learning. One of the biggest
sources of distraction that our school faces is from cell phone usage. Simply put, cell phones are a distraction to the
learning environment and have also led to issues that disrupt the social dynamic of the building.
In order to help stop one of the biggest distractions to our school environment we have adopted a new cell phone
policy. The new policy will have students place their phones in individual cell phone lockers in the morning that will
remain in the office until the end of school. These lockers will be locked and each locker will have a unique key that the
students will keep on them during the school day. At the end of the school day the students can come use their keys to get
their phones out of the lockers. They will leave the keys in the lockers so that they can be used to lock the lockers again in
the morning. There will be two separate lockers for students in grades 7-9 and students 10-12. The idea is to ensure that
cell phones are not being used in the building at all while providing a safe location for the students to store the phones.
The rationale for this policy change is below:
Promote
o The use of positive social skills through in-person interactions
o Student accountability
o Skills that may be asked of them by future employers in regards to limited cell phone usage
Eliminate
o Battles that staff face when having to enforce the cell phone policy in their individual classrooms or
hallways
These battles take time away from class that could otherwise be used productively
o Distractions in the classroom that hinder the learning process
o Instances of inappropriate cell phone use on school grounds
I have included the new policy in its entirety on the back of this letter for you to look at. The main thing you can
do as a parent/guardian to help us with our new policy is to support it. If you need to get ahold of your student during the
school day please call the school and we can deliver the information to them without having to pull them out of class to do
so. If your student needs to contact you they can do so by coming to the principal’s office. By supporting our new policy
you are supporting less distractions to the learning process and more impactful moments of learning taking place. Student
learning is most effective when students and parents/guardians work together towards the same goal. The North Mercer
R-III School District’s goal, as previously stated in our Mission Statement, is to inspire our students to learn a diversity of
life skills in a safe environment as they learn to become respectful and productive citizens. Again, the best way you can
support our goal is to support us in this endeavor. Thank you for your time and support! We look forward to seeing our
students soon!
Respectfully,
Wade Hall