Area teens will be giving the airwaves a rest after Tuesday, at least during school hours, when rules call for a ban on cell phone use, including text messaging.

According to school policy at Charleston High School, "Students are not allowed to have cell phones on during regular school hours (7:50 a.m. to 3:20 p.m.) unless authorized by the administration or a supervising staff member."

While they can take their cell phones to school, they are supposed to be "turned off and out of sight," said Assistant Principal Trevor Doughty.

Similar policies are in effect in other area schools, including Charleston Middle School, where Jerry Calandrilla, assistant principal, said, "We can't tell them not to bring them to school, but basically, we want them turned off, out of sight, and out of our hearing range."

High school Principal Diane Hutchins said when students forget and leave their phones on, many times a call that interrupts class is from a parent attempting to leave a message for the student.

Text messaging, experts say, continues to grow more popular as "texters" grow more dexterous and new and younger techno-savvy students get their first cell phones and thumb-tap their way onto the airwaves.

It's like the new note passing, but better, Hutchins said, "because they're not just communicating with somebody in the classroom; it's someone in another classroom, or outside the building, or wherever."

At Mattoon High School, cell phones may be turned on before and after school, but not during school hours, according to Principal Ken Reed.

"It's an ongoing situation that's covered in the student handbook and there are graduated consequences," he said.

The final consequence is for the student to have the cell phone confiscated.

"A parent or guardian must then pick it up," Reed said.

Students, at both the middle school and high school levels, learn quickly to take and send photos and videos, text messages, voice messages and recordings.

They can also get on the Internet for instant messaging if they are on the phone and the person they want to talk to is on a computer at home.

Charleston High School senior Jordan Gandolfi has had her cell phone since her freshman year, she said.

"I probably text message a few hundred times a week just talking," she said. "I don't know anybody who doesn't have a cell phone."

Texting isn't so important to Tommy Thomason, also a senior, who has had his phone for two years.

"I use the phone normally to talk to friends. I text occasionally, but that's not really what I use it for," he said.

Thomason uses a pre-paid cell phone that he bought himself.

"Since I pay for it, I thought prepaid was the only way to go," he said.

Gandolfi, like many of her friends, learned quickly that phone plans with unlimited text messages are the way to go for them. A few teens, however, learned the hard way - at a rate of around 15 cents apiece - that excess use can rack up hundreds of dollars on cell phone bills.

Casey Wesch, a senior, has had a cell phone for five years, she said. She sends photos and videos, and particularly likes being able to download music.

Wesch, who shares 700 cell phone minutes a month with her mother and brother, said she sends "maybe 200 to 300 text messages a week, mostly just to say 'Hi. What's up?'"

Having a cell phone was especially convenient for Wesch before she got her driver's license. A member of the Trojet dance team, she found a cell phone was handy to call for rides after practices.

A former English teacher, Hutchins said she worries some about students getting into bad habits because of the use of quick speak shortcuts when texting and in chat rooms, such as: cu, by, ez, thx, and l8r, which are pretty much self-explanatory, and cyt (see you tomorrow), jk (just kidding) and imo (in my opinion).

"I worry about what effect it might have on their formal writing," she said. "I haven't been in the classroom for a long time, so I can't say from experience, but I can say it's a concern of mine."

On the plus side, Doughty said he believes students communicate more with texting because it is so informal.

"They're much more free with what they say, and I think that can be both good and bad," he said.

"They are getting used to communicating, but not face to face, and I think that could be a problem."

With all this texting going on, do students really talk to each other any more? idk ("I don't know" in txtin quick speak), but according to Calandrilla, cell phones and all the extra functions that come with them are culturally driven.

"We live in a culture where we have cell phones, the Internet, all these things," he said, "and adults who haven't learned about all the technology can catch up now or catch up later, but they'll have to do it some time. There's more on the way."

Maybe it's time to start txtin ur kdz - just not during school hours.

Contact Bonnie Clark at bclark@jg-tc.com or 348-5727.