Gov. Bob Ferguson and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal are expected to propose “away for the day” cellphone policies that will ban students from using their phones and other smart devices from the first bell to the last bell. In both cases, the restriction would apply between classes and during lunch periods, and offer some exemptions, including for students who need their phones for documented health reasons and as part of their education plans.
Ferguson and Reykdal said the ban is a top priority for them and both want the restrictions in place by next September, for the start of the 2027-28 school year. The proposed ban will be a priority within the slate of bills the governor proposes each session.
Ferguson said a statewide cellphone ban is overdue and he will use the bully pulpit of his office to make it happen. He plans to announce his proposal at a news conference Tuesday at Robert Eagle Staff Middle School in North Seattle, which started requiring students to stash their cellphones in locked pouches during the school day in 2024.
Similarly, Reykdal said there’d been enough studies and it’s time to act.
Katy Payne, a spokesperson for superintendent's office, said Reykdal was pleased to learn that the governor was adding momentum to an issue that the superintendent’s office has been working on.
If the legislature passes a bell-to-bell ban next year, Washington would join a list of nearly 40 states and the District of Columbia that have banned or restricted on-campus cellphone use, according to a tracker from Education Week, a national K-12 publication.
Most Washington school districts have policies restricting cellphone use during instructional time, but a statewide ban would also replace a hodgepodge of local policies, which can vary by school and district.
Proponents say the bans curb classroom distraction, improve learning, reduce bullying and address concerns over students’ mental health. A 2025 report in JAMA Pediatrics found that teenagers were averaging about an hour and a half a day on smartphones during the 6.5 hours of the school day.
Restricting cellphone use “costs virtually nothing, and yet studies show we’ll expect positive results,” Ferguson said in an interview. “Studies show the sheer number of hours that are lost to learning in the classroom because students are distracted by their phones. To me that’s just completely and totally unacceptable.”
“We should be doing everything possible to provide the best learning experience in the classroom for our students, and we are not doing that right now,” he said.
Ferguson said there are a lot of details to be worked out over the next few months, and he intends to have conversations with local school superintendents, teachers, parents and students, as well as continue to review research on the topic.
The unusually early announcement is intended to build a coalition to make a compelling case to the Legislature in January.
Reykdal said the proposal is intended to keep students focused on learning while they are at school.
“This is an opportunity to remind students and families that the purpose of school really is instructional delivery and learning,” he said.
Allowing cellphones into a classroom environment is akin to permitting students from previous generations to walk into classrooms with boomboxes or MP3 players, he said.
“It’s never been acceptable to do that,” he said. “And now we have learned that this is clearly distracting kids in their learning environment.”
Reykdal’s proposal will cover smartwatches, in addition to cellphones. He expects it to include an exception for teachers to use mobile devices as part of a planned learning activity, with permission from a certified school staff member.
He also wants to give districts the flexibility to make stricter policies. He expects exemptions for emergencies, but also for districts to provide alternatives for families to contact their children during the school day if necessary.
Neither Reykdal or Ferguson expect the bill to address broader technology use in schools.
So far, the results of cellphone restrictions have been mixed. Administrators and school leaders have reported an increase in student engagement, happier teachers and less unsanctioned use. A 2025 working paper on cellphone bans in Florida found student test scores improved in the second year, but schools also saw a short-term increase in suspensions.
A study published in April, looking at schools that required students to store their phones in pouches, found that on-campus cellphone use dropped following the ban. But researchers found no significant academic gains and no effect on attendance. Suspensions increased sharply in the year after the policies were enacted, though they returned to baseline by the third year. Similar results were seen in student well-being data, which plummeted the year after the bans went into effect but rose above baseline by the third year.
Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education and one of the authors, said the “sobering” results should not be the reason for halting these bans.
“Maybe it’s not just the phones, but devices more broadly need to be managed,” he said. “Maybe it’s that having them pay attention is necessary but once you have their attention, you need high-quality instruction. You need good curricula.”
But schools and districts can learn from the study to help design better cellphone policies, he said.
They should be prepared for challenges enforcing the restrictions, he said. Schools also probably need a centralized collection point for the devices if they want to drive down usage. And clear communication about how to reach students in an emergency is also important, he said.
Educators by and large support restrictions. The Washington Education Association said it favors legislation that requires cellular devices to be powered off and stored away during instructional hours, including between classes and at lunch time. It also supports exemptions for documented medical reasons, education plans and for students in transitional housing.
Jeff Snell, the executive director of the Washington Association of School Administrators, said administrators would not be surprised that a statewide cellphone ban is the next step.
“There’s a lot of agreement around it,” Snell said.
But the districts would want to know more about local flexibility and whether there will be financial assistance to help with implementation, such as funds to buy pouches or to hire lunch period supervisors.
Ferguson said he will look into funding to support a cellphone ban, citing New York’s phone-free schools law, which came with $13.5 million to help districts make it work.
Parents who have advocated curbing cellphone use in school said while they await the details, they’re happy the state is moving forward.
“It’s about time,” said Emily Cherkin, a Seattle parent and ed-tech writer. “I am grateful that they are thinking about this and they are doing something.”
She applauds the intention to ban cellphone use during the school day, including during short intervals between classes. (A districtwide Seattle Public Schools school cellphone policy, which went into effect last month, allows high schoolers to use phones between classes and at lunch.)
But Cherkin said she is worried loopholes could be exploited, and has questions about where the phones will be stored — in backpacks near students or far away in a cubby — and about the enforcement mechanism.
“It’s only as good as its enforcement,” she said.
She also has another target: overall use of school-issued internet-connected devices that present similar problems with safety, privacy and efficacy.
Ashley Gross, the colead of Distraction-Free Schools WA who has two children in Seattle Public Schools, said the state has been an outlier when it came to passing a statewide cellphone law.
The strongest possible bill will include storing phones in a central location, she said. And she'd rather see a bill without an exemption for teaching. It’s unreasonable to expect students to have a device that costs several hundred dollars, she said.
“We have been wanting this for a long time, and we’ve spent multiple years now with some districts having strong policies in place and others not, and that’s just not equitable for our kids,” Gross said.
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