By Dan Stark | UConn Journalism
January 27, 2025
School officials throughout southeastern Connecticut are seeking ways to more effectively prevent students from focusing too much in-school time on their cell phones at the expense of their educational progress. This comes after the State Board of Education in August urged school districts to eliminate cell phone use by elementary and middle school students during the school day and severely limit the devices’ use by high school students.
Officials at some schools in southeastern Connecticut updated policies prior to the new guidelines, while others stood firm with their policies or were already working on updating them when the directive was issued.
One of the school districts that altered its policy before the new guidelines were issued is Stonington. The district partnered with the University of Connecticut in a study about the connection between mental health and social media use. As part of the study, middle school students in grades 6–8 are required to keep their phones in Yondr pouches, which are magnetic locking pouches, for the entire school day, according to Daniel Kelley, a member of the Stonington Board of Education.
Kelley said the changes resulted in improved student engagement in the classroom.
“The amount of engaging that we have now is so much better than it was before,” he said. “They used to have them at the cafeterias and they’d sit there on their phones, text people and not talk to the people at their table. Now, everyone is talking like normal.”
Kelley said the board “thought there was going to be more opposition to the pouches” and there hasn’t been,” and that “most parents I’ve talked to are in favor of it,” as well as teachers and staff.
He also said the board is considering implementing a similar measure at Stonington High School.
“Technology can be employed in schools to personalize and accelerate learning when integrated thoughtfully and appropriately,” the state board of education wrote in a policy statement on the issue in August. “However, in 2023, the United States Surgeon General issued an Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, which highlights the concerning relationship between excessive, unrestricted social media use and increased mental health challenges in youth.”
The Lyme-Old Lyme school district also reviewed its policies just before the state directive was issued. Jason Kemp, chairman of the Region 18 Board of Education that oversees Lyme-Old Lyme schools, said the previous policy was “pretty similar to what we have, but the overall policy was outdated.” There were, for example, references to obsolete technologies such as pagers, he said.
Under the district’s new policy, middle school students can bring cell phones to school, but the devices must remain in their backpacks at all times, except during lunch. High school students have more flexibility under the policy. They are allowed to use their phones in study hall periods, but are not allowed to use them in regular classes.
Kemp said the district has not revisited the policy since the new guidelines were passed as “the district was comfortable with where we were.”
“The policy allows some flexibility with the understanding that it can’t interfere with education and class, but there’s some allowance the older [students] get,” he said.
One district that did not make major changes after the new guidelines came out is Norwich. Under the current policy, students can take their cell phones to school, but must turn them off upon arriving at school and must keep them in their backpacks or lockers through the day, according to Mark Kulos, the chairman of the Norwich Board of Education.
Kulos said the district did not make major changes to its guidelines “because our policies were pretty much in line, or even stricter than what the state guidelines were.” He said the board didn’t receive much pushback from parents when the policy was implemented.
“When we instituted the policy, I think that most parents were in agreement in our community that as long as the kids had the phone as that sort of safety net with them, they felt OK that we were enforcing the idea of no cell phone use during school time,” he said.
Kulos also said he encourages parents who need to contact their students in emergency situations to call the school directly instead of their child’s cell phones.
While some districts have settled, at least for the time being, on cell phone policies, other districts are still in the process of updating those policies. In New London, for example, the board of education’s policy committee is working to create an updated cell phone policy. This work began prior to the release of the state guidelines, according to board president Elaine Maynard-Adams.
Maynard-Adams said the committee recently surveyed middle and high school staff, revealing a close split on what direction to go in, though she noted the survey only got a 30% response rate.
“The feedback that we had gotten as of our last policy meeting, which we didn’t feel was a representative sampling of the majority of our staff, but it was pretty evenly split as to those staff members who felt that this was not a problem versus others who said this is a problem,” she said.
Maynard-Adams said that the creation of a new policy has been “an eye-opening process” to her. She explained she went into the process with the mindset that students don’t need cell phones in classrooms since students can be reached by calling the school directly.
“After hearing from students, I’m a little more sympathetic to those who feel they have a valid reason for carrying that phone with them,” she said, including students with jobs and students who are responsible for their younger siblings.
Additionally, Maynard-Adams said, “we should not only be looking at student use of cell phones, but staff use as well.” She said while she hasn’t heard of any issues about staff cell phone use, she said she would like to see staff members held to the same standards as students.
“If we are going to say to a student ‘you have no reason to be using your phone during the instructional day,’ I would be hard-pressed to say, ‘but it’s okay for your teachers to be texting friends about Saturday plans,’” she said.