HIE, it matters not at all whether or not the child uses the phone. He is not allowed to have one in school, so the fact that he chooses to blatantly flout the rule, shows he is not trustworthy.
I don’t know how old most of the posters are who are in support of the students, but most responsible parents and grandparents of my generation at least, are tired of kids thinking they can do anything they want, and will deviously go about doing those things, then cry “foul” when they are caught in the act. You can choose to unproductively defend them all you want, but they have no rights, except those that the Yeshivah confers upon them. I have said repeatedly, IT IS NOT A DEMOCRACY – it is PRIVATE SCHOOLING!
Would you argue the same point if the rule related to the wearing of white-only button-down shirts and the student came in wearing a plaid, or perhaps a different solid color. Maybe blue shirts are JUST as nice as white. Maybe the student LIKES blue shirts. Maybe he NEEDS to wear it so he can feel a sense of personal identity. WHO CARES????? The rule is white button-down shirts, so that’s what a student who wants to attend this school has to conform to. If not, there’s the door.Find a different school.
Understand that nobody makes rules about cell phones just in order to make kids miserable. Clearly there has been a problem (and cheating through texting on the phone, has been found to be one among many problems), and it is responsible of the principal to ensure that the problem is resolved. We don’t know what the original situation was that prompted the random searches, but it had to be that too many students were non-compliant with the rules, and a stop had to be put to this.