New school year new policies: From gaming to academic integrity

By Hadley Cress ‘27

Photo by Hadley Cress

As the school year begins and students start to settle into their new routine, it is important to know the changes to the school policies. Staying informed will allow students to adapt to these new policies quickly and prevent accidental breaking of school rules.

As the 2025-2026 school year starts, there are 3 new policies regarding gaming on campus, punctuality and tardiness, and the leaving campus policy. In addition to the new policies, there are 2 changes to the current ones: the academic integrity policy and the phones policy.

These new policies are important; however, this article is meant to focus on the reasoning behind each policy so it will include an outline of the policy, not the actual policy itself. To see the policies written out please visit the community expectations document. 

Gaming on Campus

The new policy regarding gaming on campus states that there will be no online games played (including New York Times’ games) during the hours of 8am - 4pm. If a student is seen playing games on a device, that device will be taken to the “technology spa” where it will stay until the end of that break period. 

This will not interfere with a student's ability to participate in their classes because their devices will be returned after the rest period. This policy is not meant to take devices for hours at a time but simply offer a change for the break period that the student is in.

Derek Kanerak the Upper School Head spoke in an interview about the reasoning behind this new policy stating “Gaming last year had a pretty negative impact on our community,”. In many different open spaces, students could be seen hovering in groups around campus sucked into their screens. 

Last year the Dant lounges had to be closed 3 times due to the yelling and ruckus caused by students playing video games.

Although this has not happened yet, the school intends on blocking games through the network system. At this moment they do not have the resources to go about this but it is expected to be put in motion next school year.

As this new policy has been in effect, Kanerak has already seen an upwards shift towards more social connections between students and a more productive use of time. “I’ve seen more kids playing with the sports equipment,” said Kanerak, adding “I would love to see that even more, but that's kind of an early sign that things are good.”

Punctuality and Tardy

In the past the policy on tardiness has differed from teacher to teacher making it difficult for students to gauge what time they will be marked “unexcused tardy" for. As the new school year starts, the faculty has agreed to create a universal definition for tardies and absences. Anything more than one minute late is an “unexcused tardy” and anything more than 10 minutes late is an “unexcused absence”.

The idea behind this new policy is to give students more consistency. It can be difficult to know what the rules are when they are different for every course. With this new policy, teachers and students have a general definition for what it means to be tardy and absent.

While this policy will continue for the rest of the year, administration is open to feedback on how it is impacting students and teachers. Similar to the changing of the start of school back to 8:30 from 8:25, which was the start time of last year because it was greatly impacting students who take the bus, the Administration wants to see how this policy will impact everyone.

Leaving Campus Policy

The third and final new policy is the off campus policy. In the past only 11th and 12th graders have been given full range off campus privileges including driving off campus. 9th and 10th graders were required to stay within walking distance to campus and had set boundaries of where they were allowed to walk to. 

The new policy allows all Upper School students to leave campus without boundaries or rules around cars.

The Upper School Administration feels that they should not have rules they can not enforce. John Harnetiaux the Upper School Dean of Students stated “I'm a big fan of having whatever policies we have [that] match reality. It's disingenuous to have a policy that you can't fully enforce.”

Without the proper resources, Catlin Gabel School could not uphold the past policy and did not want parents to be misled by the rules which seemed to promise that underclassmen would remain within walking distance throughout the day. 

While the policy no longer restricts students, the Administration has encouraged parents to talk to their students about what their personal boundaries should be. 

This policy, however, does not allow students to miss required activities such as assemblies, cnc, and class.

Phone Policy

The phone policy will be fairly similar to last year. All students are required to put their phones in the phone sleeves in their classroom. While this was required last year, students were also allowed to leave their phones in their bags.

This year, regardless of a teacher’s opinion on where students should store their phones, all devices must be placed in the phone sleeve. This will ensure unity across all classrooms and give students a sense of consistency.

To ensure this policy is followed, Kanerak and Shannon Rush, the Upper school Academic Dean, plan to visit classrooms more often to see who is carrying out the new policy. 

The update to this policy will continue to allow students to stay focused in class and put their best foot forward. 

Academic Integrity

The final update to the schools policies is the Academic Integrity policy. As of this year, students will no longer have a first offence warning in every class when it comes to indeterminate authorship. Instead, each student will get one warning for the year, and the second offence will have further consequences.

Indeterminate authorship means the teacher is unsure who wrote the work a student submitted, and the student is unable to prove their authorship. This policy change was made to ensure that students are growing from their mistakes instead of taking advantage of a warning in each class. 

It is important to note that 9th graders do not have the same policy because they are new to the Upper school and are still learning how to create proper citations and other important skill sets. Kanerak emphasized the importance of possible future cases being used as “purely for education” for 9th graders.

Another minor addition is that Grammarly is no longer allowed. The use of this is now considered to be an academic integrity violation because of the generative AI inside the program.

The reasonings surrounding each of these policies are to enhance student learning and ensure that students are being supported and pushed to be their best selves. If students or parents have concerns or questions about the policy changes they are encouraged to reach out to the Upper School administration to provide feedback and gain clarity.