LAUSD will ban cellphones from school day beginning in 2025

The Los Angeles Unified School District will ban student cellphone and social media use during the school day amid rising concerns about the impact of the technologies on youth mental health.

The board voted 5-2 Tuesday to develop a policy to roll out in January 2025.

“I understand that you can't put the genie back in the bottle to some extent when it comes to kids having their phones and social media,” said the resolution’s primary sponsor, board member Nick Melvoin. “But I think that we can do more to monitor the school day to make sure that kids are focused.”

LAUSD joins California lawmakers and districts from across the country in trying to limit technology use that distracts students from learning and that educators say amplifies conflicts.

This week U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for social media labels like those on cigarettes and alcohol warning young people of the mental health harms associated with the platforms.

Researchers are still trying to determine how and whether the increase in smartphone and social media use is connected to rising distress and suicide attempts in young people.

Board members George McKenna and Scott Schmerleson, both former principals, voted against the measure, citing concerns about how the policy would be enforced and whether it will increase students' awareness of how technology has impacted their mental health.

“Simply taking away the cellphone does not mean that every student's anxiety or addiction goes away,” Schmerelson said.

LAUSD banned cellphones. Now what?

The resolution directs district staff to gather input from experts, educators, students, and parents and present revised rules about phone use to the board in the fall, for implementation in January 2025.

The new policy does not need board approval, although Melvoin told LAist that he expects public and board feedback may be incorporated when the revised policy is presented later this year.

The prospective policy must also consider the needs of different grades and students with disabilities. Board member Kelly Gonez amended the resolution to also include accommodations for students who use cellphones for translation when an interpreter or educator who speaks their home language is not available.

Reseda Charter High School rising senior Neel Thakkar predicted student pushback to the school day ban and asked the board to allow student input to shape the new policy.

“That way, LAUSD can not only have a platform to explain to students exactly how and why and to what scale this policy is helping students and increasing academic performance and increasing mental health,” Thakkar said at Tuesday’s board meeting. He also serves on Melvoin’s youth advisory council.

How will the ban be enforced?

One of the biggest unanswered questions is how the district will enforce the ban. Educators say there’s often a gap between the district’s current policy restricting cellphone use during class and what’s happening on each school campus.

“If it’s up to individual teachers and principals more and more time is just going to be spent enforcing it,” Melvoin said. “The idea is to remove the onus on the individual staff members.”

Students may be asked to secure their phone in a locker or other device to prevent them from using it.

The Bay Area’s San Mateo-Foster City School District started requiring middle school students to seal their phones in magnetically locked pouches in 2022. The pouches are unlocked at the end of the school day and teachers can provide access in case of an emergency.

“What we've seen is a really, really substantial increase in the number of kids working collaboratively with one another and paying attention to their teacher when they're in their class,” Superintendent Diego Ochoa told LAist’s public affairs program AirTalk.

In West L.A., Katherine Johnson STEM Academy Principal Kyle Hunsberger said the benefits extend beyond the uninterrupted classroom. The school became a “phoneless campus” in spring 2022. Students are expected to leave their phones at home or secure them in a locker

“Kids are learning how to talk about their feelings, how to engage with others, how to engage in productive conflict resolution,” Hunsberger said. “Rather than, you know, venting about it on social media or engaging in a negative group chat.”

What is the current policy?

The district last revised its student cellphone policy in 2011 and its rules governing social media use in 2018.

But educators say implementation of the existing policy varies from campus to campus and even from classroom to classroom.

“The time I have spent policing phone use could have been better spent on helping students recover from COVID learning loss through reading, essay writing, and group projects,” said Malinda Marcus, an English teacher at Mulholland Middle School’s robotics magnet program.

Venice High English teacher Hazel Kight Witham worked with colleagues for the last year to try and implement a phone-free school policy, but was hampered, in part because of a lack of resources to store confiscated devices. Even efforts to bolster enforcement eroded as the school year went on.

School publication The Oarsman reported “some students feel nothing has changed,” in May.

Rising Hale Charter Academy eighth-grader Raquel Ramirez said her school bans cellphones throughout the day.

“Usually we don't really follow those rules and the teachers don't really care,” Ramirez said. For example, she tends to pull her phone out during groggy first-period P.E. classes.

But she’s also used her phone during school to call her mom when another student harassed her in sixth grade.

“That made me feel a lot safer and it made me feel a lot better, the fact that my mom was there to protect me,” Ramirez said.