The Los Angeles Unified School District is considering adopting a stricter cell phone policy to ban phone use for the entirety of the school day.
Amidst concerns of the effects that cell phones are having on students’ learning, mental health and interpersonal connections around the country, the LAUSD Board of Education will vote Tuesday on the proposal that would ban students’ use of phones during all hours on campus, not just during class time.
Board Member Nick Melvoin, who made the proposal, cited research done on the effects that cell phones and their distraction potential have on learning.
“By removing personal smartphones and social media from the school day, we will help keep kids focused on the technology that supports education by insulating them from the distractions of technology that does not,” Melvoin wrote in an Op-Ed published in the LA Times on Friday.
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The policy currently in place, adopted in May 2011, prohibits students’ use of cellphones “on campus during normal school hours or school activities, excluding the students’ lunchtime or nutrition breaks.”
The policy leaves it up to each school to decide if they want to adopt stricter policies.
Though some parents are in support of the ban, believing it will greatly improve the quality of their children’s learning and of the relationships they form at school, others are concerned about what this would mean if they have to contact their children throughout the school day.
“I think it's important for them to have a cell phone because of any emergency,” Abner Munoz, a parent of two kids in the LAUSD, said.
Munoz said it is up to the parents to educate their children on appropriate times to use cell phones.
He said, instead of enforcing a strict policy in writing, teachers should create rules about cell phones in their classrooms.
“A smartphone ban in LAUSD schools would come with challenges, particularly related to enforcement. But these are surmountable hurdles,” Melvoin wrote.
School Board members will vote on the resolution at their meeting on Tuesday. If the resolution passes, the ban will be effective starting January 2025.
