Dean Liptak, a former wrestler¹ turned science teacher at Fivay High School, wanted to stop his students from using their cell phones during classes.

 

Liptak took matters into his own hands by secretly taking the disruptive device to school and activating² it in his classroom from March 31 to April 2.

 

'I wanted to fix the cell phone problem in my class,' Liptak told a district investigator³.

 

The Tampa Bay Times reports that Liptak said he never wanted to cause problems and that he thought jammers were permitted.

 

District officials were outraged⁴ and told Liptak he may have prevented students from making 911 calls in the case of an emergency.

 

'Not only did your actions potentially violate federal law, you posed a serious risk to critical safety communications as well as the possibility of preventing others from making9-1-1calls,' Superintendent⁵ Kurt Browning wrote in a letter to Liptak.

 

Liptak said he merely tried to get his students to focus on their school work.

 

'My intent for using the device was to keep students academically focused on schoolwork,' he said.

 

Parent Martie Cornell told Bay News 9 understands the frustrations⁶ with teens and their phones, but says safety needs to be put first.

 

"We've got to come to a happy medium, you know, protection and teacher sanity⁷ as well, but I think protection outweighs⁸ the teachers sanity," said Cornell.

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