Can cell phone bans in CA schools be enforced?

In these divided times, limiting cell phone use in schools has emerged as an issue both Republicans and Democrats can get behind.

But while these policies enjoy bipartisan support, enacting them may prove challenging.

Last year, California joined at least seven other states (Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia) in adopting or expanding rules to reduce the use of cell phones by students in schools when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 3216 by Assemblymember Josh Hoover (D-Folsom) into law.

This year, state lawmakers in at least nine states (Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Texas and Wisconsin) have already proposed similar limitations that are moving through their respective legislatures.

These proposals have garnered support because Americans back them – Pew Research reported in October that 68 percent of U.S. adults support a ban on middle and high school students using cell phones in class – and because research shows that cell phones pose dangers to children both physical (i.e. sleep deprivation) and mental or emotional (cyberbullying).

“It’s a national epidemic,” says Mileva Repasky, who in 2021 co-founded the Phone-Free Schools Movement, which wants schools to lock up students’ cell phones from “first bell to last bell.” After years of advocacy, Repasky says it’s gratifying “finally seeing states all across the nation recognize this issue.”

But even with widespread support, a growing chorus is warning that actually implementing limits or bans on cell phones in schools could prove difficult.

Ken Trump, president of the consulting firm National School Safety and Security Services, says that he believes developing an effective policy for regulating the use of cell phones in schools will be challenging because the devices have become so intertwined with American life.

“At this point the genie’s out of the bottle,” he says, “and it’s going to be a tight squeeze to get it back in.”

Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, says their polling has found that parents don’t support policies that cut off children from cell phones by locking them away when they arrive at school.

In fact, she says they’re so against the idea of their children not having access to cell phones that they’re willing to circumvent school policies by giving their children burner phones that they can keep on their person.

Rodrigues says parents are insistent on their children having access to cell phones due to concerns about gun violence and bullying and because a communications gap they feel exists between parents and their children’s schools.

“Overwhelmingly, what parents tell us is your little policy is great, but my kid is going to have a cell phone,” she says.

There are also potential equity concerns when it comes to enforcing cell phone policies in schools. In 2015, New York City reversed its ban on the devices in schools after it was discovered that it was strictly enforced at schools serving low-income students but less so at more affluent schools.

“Lifting the ban respects families, and it will end the unequal enforcement that has penalized students at so many high-needs schools,” then New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement at the time.

Vanessa Garza, the executive director of the Girls Athletic Leadership School Los Angeles, an all-girls charter middle school in the San Fernando Valley that has had a ban on cell phones since it opened its doors in 2016, says that school policies limiting cell phone use take “a lot of energy” to enforce.

She says every teacher and support staffer has to be on board and enforce the rules with the same fervor. If not, Garza says, students will quickly discover that they can get away with using their cell phones in one classroom and then complain when the rules are enforced elsewhere.

And there are understandable reasons why a cell phone ban might be enforced differently depending on the circumstances. In high schools, for example, students can sometimes be bigger than their teachers. In that situation, Garza says she could understand why a teacher might be hesitant to take a cell phone away from a particularly stubborn or demonstrative student.

She also says that children can be crafty, hiding earbuds behind their hair or making a show of properly stowing their current cell phone, but secretly keeping an older one on their person to, say, listen to music in class.

Of course, no teacher wants their students to listen to music during class. But formal cell phone bans or limitations place an extra responsibility on already overburdened teachers to always respond in the exact same way to a particular disruption, which can be challenging for teachers juggling lesson plans, diverse learning styles and the typical chaos of a classroom.

To help alleviate the burden, Garza says the leaders of the Girls Athletic Leadership School carefully thought through their cell phone ban so it would be simple and logical. Unlike other schools that use magnetic Yondr pouches to lock up students’ cell phone every day, Girls Athletic Leadership School simply requires its students to have their cell phones powered off and stored in their backpacks or lunch bags.

And there are understandable reasons why a cell phone ban might be enforced differently depending on the circumstances.

The first time a student is found to be using her phone on campus, it’s confiscated, and the student can pick it up at the office at the end of the day. The second time, it’s confiscated again, but the student’s guardian has to go to office to retrieve it. The third time it happens, the student is required to drop her phone off at the office at the beginning of school every year for the rest of the year.

In late February, Garza says 10 of the school’s 185 students had to drop off their phones daily.

Garza says her school’s policy has been effective, but it has started to receive pushback, not from students, but from some parents concerned about gun violence. These parents want their children to have access to their phones in the event of a mass shooting incident so they can call for help or even say goodbye to their loved ones.

Garza says whenever Girls Athletic Leadership School has to go into lockdown, she’ll get messages from parents saying, “This is why you need to let kids have phones, at times like this.”

“I have started to receive inquiries from prospective parents, like ‘Well, what about…?’” trying to poke holes in the school’s cell phone policy, she says.

AB 3216, the bill signed by Newsom, doesn’t mandate whether California schools ban or simply limit cell phone use. It just requires that by July 1, 2026, every school district, charter school and county office of education in the state adopt a policy limiting or banning the use of smartphones. The specifics are up to them.

The Los Angeles Unified School District and the San Marcos Unified School District in San Diego County both recently enacted bans that they had been working on before AB 3216 was signed into law.

“Overwhelmingly, what parents tell us is your little policy is great, but my kid is going to have a cell phone.”

A Los Angeles Unified spokesperson told Capitol Weekly in an email, “Schools were given leeway to determine how they would implement the specifics of the cellphone ban. Approximately half of the schools chose to utilize magnetic pouches or a different product, with the remaining schools moving forward without any product and operating on the honor system. Parents and students are aware of their schools’ current policies and can contact their school directly with any questions.”

The spokesperson also added, “The implementation has progressed without reports of disruptions.”

San Macros Deputy Superintendent Tiffany Campbell told Capitol Weekly that implementing the district’s policy was a “long process” involving not just outreach to parents and students, but also surveys and focus groups of their opinions.

San Marcos’ new policy mandates that cell phones be turned off and stowed from bell to bell in elementary and middle schools, while high schoolers cannot use their phones in the classroom but may use them during passing periods and lunch.

Campbell says that the district opted not to craft a policy around locking up cell phones in pouches because students told them that if the district gave them the opportunity to show that they could comply with not using their cell phones in class they would.

More than month after the policy was enacted on January 21, Campbell says its implementation has been “surprisingly smoother than we anticipated.”