Utah legislature aiming to ban cell phones in classrooms with district opt out options

SALT LAKE CITY — On Monday, Utah lawmakers introduced a draft proposal bill that aims to ban cell phones from Utah schools during school hours as early as the 2025-26 school year. The bill is scheduled to be run in the upcoming Utah legislative session.

According to the draft legislation provided to KSL TV, lawmakers will look to “prohibit a student from using a cellphone, smartwatch, or emerging technology during instructional hours” but will allow for local individual school districts to “create exemptions to the prohibition.”

“What this bill does is change the default, still allowing for local control but providing funding for districts to be able to implement pouches or cubbies or whatever else they decide at the local level,” said Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan.

Lawmakers and other advocates gathered Monday at Granger High School to unveil the bill.

“We’re preserving local control, but we’re recognizing that in the time since cell phones, and especially smartphones, become ubiquitous in schools, we have learned so much about their impact on students and their impact on the learning process that we need a reset,” Fillmore said. “We need to prohibit cell phones in schools except in specific circumstances that teachers, school boards, school districts, students, and parents can collaborate to define.”

The draft legislation also proposes a grant program for schools to come up with storage options.

“We will do that by creating a public-private partnership with the Utah legislature and donors, asking for one-time funding of $3.5 million; the legislative portion would come from the Education Stabilization fund,” said Emily Bell McCormick of The Policy Project.

Phones, smartwatches, ’emerging technology’ banned

The proposal defines that a cell phone would include a smartphone, feature phone, mobile phone, satellite phone, or “personal digital assistant that incorporates capabilities similar to a smartphone.”

It also bans smartwatches which means a “wearable computing device” that would be worn like a watch and “will be able to act in place of or as an extension of” a cell phone.

“Emerging technology” is also banned — which is defined as “any other device that has or will be able to act in place of or as an extension of an individual’s cell phone.”

Watches that tell time or monitor one’s health are not banned.

“We’ve lost enough of our kids’ attention and emotional energy and ability to learn to this epidemic, we should have acted 10 years ago, we should have acted 5 years ago, but we will act now,” McCormick said.

Districts can opt-out

The draft proposal directs school districts to come up with a policy that dictates when phones can be used. Currently the opposite exists in Utah schools — individual districts can create policies to ban them if they want.

“We know there is going to be different perspectives, and we want to take those into account, but we hope we can overcome most of those because we really are leaving the decision up to the districts,” Fillmore said.

The proposed bill says that could be to respond to an imminent threat, or to the health or safety of an individual, if their individualized education plan requires it, to address medical necessities, and that they can create additional policies establishing “reasonable exceptions” to when a student can use a device during the school day.

“We will support teachers and educations by creating a best practice model implementation policy that will save our schools time and effort to take the guess work out of the best way to make this change,” McCormick said.

Granger High School’s new cell phone policy

At Granger High School, a new cell phone policy was implemented on the first day of the 2024-25 school year. Students are allowed to have their phones before and after school, but during school hours the phone is locked in a magnetic pouch and kept in their backpacks.

“I don’t love it, but it is working,” said Luz Matos, a Granger High student. “It does let us focus more on classes and what’s going on.”

No more taking phones from students, Granger High School implementing new policy this fall

“I like the idea of no phone in class; that’s a good thing; education is important. But I don’t necessary love the idea of using pouches and keeping them away the entire day, I think there are some situations where the cell phones are helpful.” said student Mason Biddulph.

“We’ve seen major changes in our school, I have teachers reporting to me they’ve never fit so much stuff into the time they have a class period,” said Tyler Rowe, principal of Granger High School. “On the first day we did full implementation, I turned to my assistant principal during lunch time and said, ‘Boy, it’s noisy in here,’ and it dawned on me why it was noisy, and it’s a good noise, it’s kids who are at lunch and talking instead of a third of them disengaging and going into their phones.”

Contributing: Mary Culbertson, KSL TV