Oregon school districts have finished their first term under an all-day student cell phone ban, the goal of which was to improve mental health and focus in the classroom.
Governor Tina Kotek's executive order required districts to implement the ban by January, but some districts, such as Brookings-Harbor, decided to start earlier.
Superintendent Helena Chirinian said the district will go a step further this fall by returning to shared laptop carts in each classroom instead of assigning every student a laptop.
"One of the things the students actually asked for was to have less Chromebook time," she said. "They would prefer to do hands-on things and would not mind doing things [with a] paper [and] pencil."
Exceptions to the cell phone ban can be made for individual circumstances, including special education or medical needs.
Chirinian said some students still have their phones taken away after violating the policy, but she said the district has also seen greater student engagement and improvements in students' mental health.
Central Point School District 6 has reported similar results since implementing the policy in January. Superintendent Walt Davenport said students are communicating more and having healthier social interactions.
Davenport said enforcing the policy "bell-to-bell" is tricky because it’s difficult to monitor students outside of class.
"We are putting our resources towards the instructional time that's delivered bell-to-bell during the class time. Outside of that, it is very difficult to enforce," he said. "There is an intent behind that executive order that we absolutely support, but [it's] very difficult to be 100% bell-to-bell in practicality."
Davenport said much of that comes down to parents communicating with their children throughout the school day.
Still, both Chirinian and Davenport said implementing the ban was easier than they had expected.
"Kids are craving human connection. One of the things they really talked about was that they want to talk to each other about what they're learning because that helps them. Once you remove the technology a little bit, you get more of that naturally," Chirinian said. "The older they get, the clearer it is to them that they kind of need a little bit of routine and structure around putting [cell phones] away."
Davenport agreed, saying students were especially compliant once they understood the reasoning behind the ban.
"When you frame it to them like, 'Hey, you're going to experience this when you leave high school. You're going to go to a job, or you're going to be in a situation where your phones need to be put away. You need to have the capacity to do that,'" he said. "They really rose up to that level of expectation."
