California Governor Gavin Newsom Urges School Districts to Restrict Student Cellphone Use

SACRAMENTO, California – California and South Carolina could become the next states to limit cellphone use in schools, with state officials addressing the issue on Tuesday.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is sending letters to school districts urging them to restrict student smartphone use on campus. The South Carolina State Board of Education adopted guidelines to instruct local districts to ban cellphone use during classes, but postponed a final vote until next month to have more time to develop the proposal.

The efforts mark a broader effort by officials in Utah, Florida, Louisiana and elsewhere to try to limit cellphone use in schools in order to reduce distractions in the classroom — and address the health impacts of social media. mental health of children and adolescents.

But progress can be challenging. Cell phone bans are already in effect in many schools, but they are not always applied.

Districts should “act now” to help students focus in school by restricting smartphone use, Newsom said in the letter. He also cited risks to young people’s well-being, an issue that drew renewed attention in June after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms.

“Every classroom should be a place of focus, learning and growth,” the Democrat said in his letter. “Working together, educators, administrators and parents can create an environment where students are fully engaged in their education, free from the distractions of phones and the pressures of social media.”

Newsom said earlier this summer that he was planning to address student smartphone useand his letter says he is working on this with the state Legislature. Tuesday’s announcement is not a mandate, but it urges districts to act.

Newsom signed a law in 2019 giving districts the authority to regulate student access to smartphones during school hours.

The debate over banning cell phones in schools to improve academic results is not new. But authorities often turn to bans as a solution rather than finding ways to integrate digital devices as learning tools, said Antero Garcia, a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education.

“What strikes me is society’s inability to move forward and find other types of solutions other than perpetually returning to this question of ‘Should we ban devices?’ conversation as the main solution to something that didn’t work,” said Garcia.

“Suggesting reducing cell phone use in schools is a great thing to say,” he added. “What this means for the high school teacher next week, when many schools start, is a very different picture.”

Some California schools and districts have already taken action. The Santa Barbara Unified and Los Angeles Unified school districts have banned student cellphone use in recent years.

But some school board supporters say the state should go no further in passing a blanket ban on cellphone use. That decision should be left up to districts, said Troy Flint, spokesman for the California School Boards Association.

“Cellphone and social media use on campus is certainly a serious problem and one that deserves closer examination,” Flint said. “But these decisions are very specific to certain schools and certain communities, and they need to be made at the local level.”

There is no panacea to protect students from the risks posed by smartphones, but the state is “opening a conversation” about how districts could act, said David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association.

“It makes sense for us as adults to look and try to take care of students and allow them to have safe spaces to learn,” he said. “How we do that is also really important — making sure we bring students into those conversations and educators into those conversations.”

South Carolina lawmakers this summer approved a one-year temporary rule in the state budget requiring schools to ban student cellphone use or lose state funding. Schools have until the beginning of 2025 to implement specific rules and punishments for violating them.

Education officials rushed to put together the proposal so that districts had time to adapt their own rules to state guidelines.

But state board Chairman David O’Shields said Tuesday there was no need to rush and give districts “soft eggs” when a little more time could be spent working on the rules, getting more information from teachers , parents and administrators.

“Let’s get these eggs right. I want a good omelet,” O’Shields said.

O’Shields was especially convinced by Jennifer Rainville of South Carolina’s Appleseed Legal Justice Center, who pointed out that more than 100,000 students were suspended in a recent school year and called for rules to be as specific as possible in pointing districts away from that. as punishment.

“The last thing we need is to create cell phone policies that are an easy way out for students who may have a suspended day when they need to be in class,” O’Shields said.

There are questions about whether we should ban cell phones during bus trips or excursions or just during class hours.

“Let’s give kids back a distraction-free childhood,” said state Department of Education Deputy Superintendent Matthew Ferguson.

A brief survey of South Carolina teachers in May showed that 92% supported limiting cellphone access in classrooms and 55% wanted an outright ban. Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver’s survey also found that 83 percent of teachers think cell phones are a daily distraction from learning, the Department of Education wrote in a memo to the board.

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Jeffrey Collins contributed to this report from West Columbia, South Carolina. Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report to America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to cover undercovered issues. Follow Austin on X: @sophieadanna