Principal Ricardo Larios wore a bright yellow vest as he directed traffic in the hallways of Stephens Middle School in northeast Salem.
Tuesday was the first day back for sixth graders – a chance for hundreds of students to get to know their new school before their older classmates crowded the hallways.
Across the Salem-Keizer School District, sixth and ninth graders began school a day early, doing a dry run of their class schedules with teachers stationed in the halls to help them find unfamiliar room numbers.
On Wednesday, “the hallways will be a lot more packed than they already are,” math teacher Kourtney Lyman told her first period Math 6 students.
At Stephens, students filled the bleachers on one side of the school gym as Larios directed them to look at their schedules and find the teacher for their advisory period. When the halls filled with students going to class, Larios ran between the office and classrooms, helping straggling students find where they were going.
“How are we doing?” a teacher asked as they passed in the hall.
“Sweaty,” Larios replied.
The school is one of many across the district that are enforcing a strict cellphone ban this year. Stephens policy requires students to keep their phone in their backpack from the time they enter the building in the morning until class is dismissed at 4 p.m.
Teacher Claudia Garibay told her advisory students that the school is trying to move away from students having phones in pockets, where it’s easy to be distracted by a notification.
“If it’s put away in your backpack, you’ll forget about it,” she said.
Larios said the phone policy has been in place since he became principal in 2022 and has worked well.
This year, Stephens is focused on three goals: having students earn at least a C in all classes, hitting 90% attendance, and using a standard system for instruction so students have an easier time understanding material across classes, Larios said.
“I’m feeling very energized,” Larios said about the start of the year.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
