LAUSD officials consider banning cell phone use on school campuses

The Los Angeles Unified School District may soon join a growing number of districts across the country that have banned cellphone use on campus during school hours.

The issue will be discussed at Tuesday’s board meeting after being proposed by board member Nick Melvoin, who hopes the ban will prevent the potentially negative impact of phones on mental health and student well-being.

“The school phone-free policy states that from the time students enter class until the end of the day, they should not have their phones,” Melvoin said Monday. “Let’s let kids interact with each other, without the distractions that we know are detrimental to mental health and their academics.”

Her resolution cites research that supports the idea that students have less meaningful interactions with classmates and exhibit less propensity to learn when they are overly involved with their phones.

“Research indicates that excessive cell phone use impacts the mental health and well-being of adolescents and is associated with increased stress, anxiety, depression, sleep problems, feelings of aggression and suicidal thoughts,” the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting said.

The motion is already supported by board members Tanya Ortiz Franklin and President Jackie Goldberg. He needs a fourth vote to adopt it.

He references similar policies that have already been put in place in places like Florida, where public schools have started blocking student phone use during instructional time and even banned access to social media when using district WiFi in 2023. Since then, districts in Oklahoma, Kansas and Vermont Ohio, Louisiana and Pennsylvania have passed similar legislation, the text of the resolution.

If approved, it will be some time before it actually takes effect, as the resolution calls for the district to develop a set of policies regarding social media and cell phone use during regular school hours on each LAUSD campus. It would come into force at the start of 2025.

Some parents have expressed opposition to this issue because they would prefer their children to have access to their phones in case of an emergency.

“They should have it for protection once they leave the school campus,” said Regina Schoetz, an LAUSD parent who partially agrees with the motion but doesn’t think the final decision should be up to the district .

“I don’t think there should be a major ban on them or lock them up. I think it depends on the parents,” she said.

Melvoin says the last update to the cell phone use policy was implemented in 2011 and calls for no phones during school hours.