But local Ann Arbor parents and advocates are making another push to encourage the district to take it one step further — installing a district-wide policy that bans mobile devices between bells marking the start and the end of every school day and not just during class time.
“Students today are more distracted, more anxious and less engaged than ever before,” said Brent Richards, parent of a local fourth-grader and teacher at Pioneer High School.
He was among roughly a dozen others who spoke Wednesday, Nov. 5, before members of the Ann Arbor School Board, backing a petition that asks for a cellphone prohibition that’d keep schools phone-free all day across AAPS. So far, 421 have signed it.
“Our administrators confirm the vast majority of our disciplinary issues are in some way connected to phone and social media use,” Richards said. “This includes cheating, drug deals coordinated in bathrooms, cyber bullying and fights organized via text. But perhaps, the thing that saddens me most is how access to phones deprives so many of our students of meaningful social interactions where they actually look one another in the eye and talk.”
Cellphone limits have been implemented case by case among school leaders and teachers over the past couple years, particularly at Skyline High School, where a ban requiring students to store their phones during class was first piloted last year.
Typically, students are required to put their phones in pocket charts at the start of every period but can use their personal devices in between classes. The practice was extended to other AAPS high schools this fall, officials have said, as they weigh feedback from stakeholders in how to apply rules elsewhere in the district.
The topic still awaits consideration from members of the school board at a committee meeting sometime in the coming weeks.
“In the meantime, both the district administration and I know this board of education fully supports the work that our schools — that we’ve openly talked about here at the board table — are doing to limit cellphone use,” Superintendent Jazz Parks said Wednesday. “So, I know there will be continued discussion.”
Existing cellphone limits have been met with mixed responses from students, particularly those who say less access makes them feel less safe and does not truly limit distractions.
Some parents, too, have raised safety concerns about needing to contact their children during the day, especially if there’s an emergency.
Still, Amiel Handelsman, who has helped organize petitioners, said the benefits of a bell-to-bell cellphone ban would outweigh the down sides.
If a child has an individual education program or 504 plan, or if they’ve a medical condition that requires access to their phone during the day, Handelsman said parents’ proposal would still grant “rare exceptions with proper documentation.”
In cases of a crisis or lockdown, parents added use of phones could make the situation more dangerous by distracting students from receiving critical safety instructions, by alerting an intruder of students’ presence with a phone’s noise or lit-up screen or interfering with first responders’ communication attempts to save kids’ lives.
Dee Lamphear, a parent of two at Pioneer and former high school teacher of 13 years, said cellphone use also stymies learning because its use can also be addictive.
“Both of my children have lamented that they wish they had grown up in the ‘80s and ‘90s like me, in times when teens were not constantly distracted by the virtual world,” she said. “I have taken on the joyless burden of monitoring and limiting my daughters’ screen time and have insisted on positive study habits like putting their phones in the charging area when they’re doing homework or plugging their phones in downstairs at nighttime. This task requires constant negotiation with my teens.”
In July, a Pew Research poll reported that 74 percent of U.S. adults supported banning middle and high school students from using cellphones during class. This is up from 68 percent last fall. Roughly 72 percent of high school teachers in 2024 said cellphones are a major problem.
According to the National Education Association, 83 percent of NEA members support prohibiting cellphones during the entire school day.
Like other parents, Lamphear said it was unfair to put that responsibility on teachers instead of keeping phones out of the classroom entirely.
“The reality is if we have cubbies, if we have teachers policing the students, there is a struggle,” said Drake Meadow, also a father of two at Pioneer and educator at Early College Alliance at Eastern Michigan University.
“No question about it,” he said. Mimicking an internal dialogue of teachers having to police students’ device use, he added, “‘Come in, put your phones away in the caddies. On, got the hoodie, there’s the earbud. Please, put the earbud away. Oh, the smart watch.' It’s a continual distraction. And it wastes a lot of time.”
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