Virginia school district launches pilot program banning cellphone access

Seven Virginia public middle schools will participate in a pilot program to ban students’ access to cellphones during the school day.

Starting in the 2024-25 school year, students at select Fairfax County schools will receive a personal cellphone storage pouch known as a Yondr pouch.

At school each morning, each student will lock his or her cellphone inside a magnetic pouch and keep it in his or her backpack for the duration of the school day. At the end of the day, the students will use a Yondr unlocking station to open the pouches and retrieve their phones.

Teachers will be instructed not to use cellphones for class activities, and parents can contact the front office if they need to reach their child in an emergency, Fairfax County Public Schools said on its website. Students who forget their pouches will have to store their phones in the front office during the school day.

“The purpose of the pilot program is to create a more engaged learning environment for students, free of distraction from cellphones and social media,” FCPS said. “Studies show that students who use their cellphones during instructional time focus less, learn less, and achieve lower grades.”

“FCPS has rules against students using cellphones in class, but having to constantly enforce these rules takes time, energy, and focus away from teaching,” the school district added. “By locking cell phones, our teachers can spend more time teaching and less time asking students to put their phones away.”

The schools participating in the pilot program include Frost Middle School, Irving Middle School, Jackson Middle School, Poe Middle School, Robinson Secondary School, Thoreau Middle School, and Twain Middle School.

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It comes a month after Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) signed an executive order to establish “cellphone-free education” in Virginia public K-12 schools, citing concern over a youth mental health crisis driven by social media and cellphone usage.

School districts across the country have also experimented with Yondr pouches as a way of curbing cellphone use in classrooms. In the past eight years, school districts in 41 states have spent $2.5 million to buy Yondr pouches, NBC News reported at the end of last year.