Wake County Schools Weigh 'Whistleblower' Exception to Phone Policy

(TNS) — Videos recorded by students have helped expose bullying as well as glorify school fights.

North Carolina law requires students to turn off their phones during instructional time to try to reduce outside distractions. Now the Wake County school system is considering whether it can create “whistleblower protection” that would permit students to turn on their phones to record video for safety reasons such as responding to bullying.

It’s a balancing act for school leaders who are concerned about how some students promote a “fight culture” by posting videos of fights at schools.

“What we're talking about is avoiding the fight culture but not taking away a kid’s ability to document a problem,” Wake County Superintendent Robert Taylor told the school board’s policy committee on Tuesday.

PHONES MUST BE OFF IN CLASS

A state law that went into effect in January requires students to have their phones turned off in class unless they get a teacher’s permission to use them or have a valid medical or educational exemption. Enforcement is left up to the schools.
In Wake County, elementary and middle school students aren’t allowed to use their phones at all during the school day. But high schools can allow students to use their phones when they’re not in class, such as during lunch and in the hallways between class changes.

“When there is an incident at school and students get their phones out and they start recording, are they in violation of policy at that point?” asked school board member Lynn Edmonds, who chairs Wake’s policy committee.

AVOIDING CREATING A FIGHT CULTURE AT SCHOOLS

Both locally and nationally, students have rushed to post school fight videos on social media. Incidents that have gone viral over the years in North Carolina schools include:

• Students at Southeast Raleigh High School posted video of the fatal 2023 stabbing of a student during a fight on campus. Wake recently agreed to pay the family of the slain student $800,000.
• Students at Parkland High School in Winston-Salem posted video in 2024 of a student slapping a teacher in class. The student was charged with assaulting the teacher.
• Students at Rolesville High School posted a video in 2017 of the school resource officer slamming a student to the ground while responding to a fight. The officer later resigned.
• Students at Rolesville High posted a video in 2019 of the principal and school resource officer being knocked to the floor while trying to break up a fight in the cafeteria.

“The fight culture is a problem for sure,” Edmonds said during this week’s policy committee meeting.

VIDEO RECORDED FOR PROTECTION AGAINST BULLYING

But there have been cases of students recording incidents to prove they’re being bullied. The school board has also used video and photos from students’ phones as evidence during disciplinary hearings.

School board member Chris Heagarty cited the example of how some parents had complained that a coach was verbally abusing athletes. Heagarty said the principal didn’t act until the parents produced a video of the coach’s behavior.

“From the parents’ point of view, access to that video was really important to resolve the issue,” Heagarty said.

Heagarty asked staff if there was any language that could “create some sort of whistleblower protection or exemption from discipline” for a student who turns on their phone to record an incident to protect themselves.

At the same time, Heagarty said this kind of loophole could create other problems.

“If capturing an incident of violence is an acceptable use for turning on your phone, does that get us right back to the situation we talked about before where there’s a fight?” Heagarty said. “There’s a ring of students. They’re all on their phone. First responders, SRO, or staff can’t get to it because of all the students recording it.”

POTENTIAL ADDITIONS TO SCHOOL POLICY

Taylor, the superintendent, said principals already can use their professional judgment to determine whether it was appropriate for a student to record video.

“They have a professional ability to say a student was being bullied in the bathroom and somebody recorded that versus a fight in the lobby and hundreds of students run up,” Taylor said. “Professionally, a principal has the license to make that judgment call.”

But Taylor told board members they can look at what additional language can be added to policy to spell it out.

“What we can do is just think about suggestions to the policy, of language that might be added to address what we know is the fight culture versus a student documenting for some other purpose,” Taylor said.

©2026 Raleigh News & Observer. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.