San Mateo Union High School District Board of Trustees bans cellphones: District restricts access to devices during entire school day

Along with the ban, the district should establish a digital citizenship and wellness curriculum or educational framework to teach students how to properly use technology and establish healthy habits, Superintendent Randall Booker said. 

“It’s not enough just to restrict, we need to teach kids why we’re restricting it,” Booker said. 

Trustees approved the bell-to-bell ban unanimously with the belief it will increase productivity in the classroom, establish consistency across campuses and promote overall positive social experiences for young students. 

“This is not about enforcement, discipline, punishment,” Trustee Robert Griffin said. “This is about well-being.” 

The superintendent’s recommendation to trustees was not to move forward with a bell-to-bell ban, and rather establish a framework for enforcing instructional time bans. Going the extra mile would require significant staffing, supervisory systems to ensure compliance and infrastructure all which would cost the district approximately $200,000 annually, Booker said. 

To Trustee Jennifer Jacobson, these factors are not reason enough to be lenient on cellphone usage during the school day. She said she’s confident the district can address concerns, create a policy that has worthwhile exceptions and emergency response guidelines, and see the financial value. 

“These sound like adult problems that are getting in the way of what is best for kids,” Jacobson said. “These are significant hurdles, they are secondary to the primary mission that we as a board need to advance, which is creating an optimal learning environment for our students.” 

Trustees have studied this topic extensively and surveys were conducted gauging interest from teachers, students and parents. While approximately two-thirds of surveyed teachers supported a bell-to-bell ban, fewer parents were convinced it was necessary and even fewer students felt it was a good option. 

While only 38.7% of surveyed parents favored restricting cellphones all day, proponents for the stricter policy showed up in numbers at recent board meetings sharing data on mental health, personal anecdotes and rationale to mitigate technology addiction. 

A parent of two students at Mills High School said a key distinction between moving toward a bell-to-bell ban compared to essentially maintaining the status quo and limiting phone use during class time is the burden of responsibility. 

The latter option “puts all the burden on the teachers,” the parent said during public comment. “I don’t think that’s working now and I don’t think it will work in the future.” 

With the approved bell-to-bell ban, the district now must come up with a formal policy with defined limitations and exceptions. An implementation plan must also be developed strategically, Trustee Greg Land said. 

Similar bell-to-bell bans were implemented both at San Mateo High School and Design Tech High School, a charter school authorized by the district. The former has seen successful implementation for seven years, while the latter resulted in student outrage and protest resulting in numerous student suspensions. 

The distinction between the two is how the policies were implemented, Land said. San Mateo High School prioritized introducing the ban to student leaders before broadening its reach, while Design Tech was a more “top-down approach,” Land said. 

“It’s the buy-in of the students that will say ‘OK, I’m on board,’” Land said. “Implementation has to be done at the school, with input of students, to be done in a certain timeline.” 

Getting students to buy in may be difficult, though. Of 4,154 surveyed students, 84.7% believe the current practice of restricting cellphone use during class is sufficient, while only 8.5% want stricter rules. 

Student trustees have previously shared their desire for a lenient policy that only restricts access to phones during instructional time. Most have argued it was important to self-regulate use and develop habits on their own. 

“We’re impacting our own futures if we’re not paying attention,” student Trustee Sara Joseph, a student at Hillsdale High School, said Thursday. 

While parents and teachers say they’ve witnessed students on their phones during passing periods, breaks and lunches, students say that’s not a fair assessment on how socializing takes place among friends. 

However, to teachers, it’s easier to see when cellphone addiction negatively impacts students. 

Arienna Adamcikova, a teacher at Capuchino High School who has worked in the district for 24 years, noted that while phone use may not be an issue among every student, the ones who are inclined to use it in an unhealthy way are the ones who need the stricter policy. 

“I see our most vulnerable students, our loneliest students, the kids that struggle the most with academics are the ones that are most addicted to their phones,” Adamcikova said. “If we care about those kids … we’re going to get the phones away.” 

Removing cellphones from the equation will give students a new found freedom, untethered to a distracting device that has socially and emotionally harmful effects, Jacobson said. 

“We need to give our kids back their lives,” Jacobson said. “We need to give them back their childhood. … We need to give them back tactile, real experiences.”