Marietta Super Hopes to Expand Cell Phone Ban to High School

MARIETTA — Marietta Schools Superintendent Grant Rivera said he hopes to extend the school district’s new middle school smartphone ban to high school students.

Rivera said so during a back-to-school event Thursday. More than 1,100 educators from across Marietta City Schools attended the event at the Marietta High School Performing Arts Center.

Rivera told teachers he wants to use the new policy as a guideline to create a similar policy for high school students. He said he has also considered extending the policy to elementary students.

Rivera said he hopes to have the policy implemented for high school students by the fall of 2025, pending board approval and community engagement.

“We’re not going to operationalize something we can’t do well,” Rivera told the MDJ. “In my opinion, it would make sense to roll this up at the start of August 2025 because we would have had an entire eighth-grade class who would have been socialized to this new expectation. We are open to do whatever is best. Certainly, I will (align) my actions to what the board believes (is) best for this community.”

In June, the Marietta Board of Education unanimously approved the use of cellphone pouches to lock the devices of students at the Marietta Sixth Grade Academy and Marietta Middle School throughout the school day, starting this fall semester.

The pouches will be locked during first period and unlocked before the final bell rings by special magnets retained only by staff. Exceptions can be made for students who have a documented medical condition.

Rivera said the district has to get the policy right before moving it to the high school level.

For the time being, Marietta will be partnering with Emory and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta to study how this policy changes middle school students’ social media use and perceptions of self, Rivera said.

Rivera said the goal with this new policy is to keep students “focused and present.”

“It’s a comprehensive strategy that’s so much bigger than a pouch or a magnet,” he said. “It’s about empowering families to reflect on what (students) do at home... so they can make their homes an extension of our schools.”

In other news, Rivera gave teachers a sneak peek at how the school district performed on the Georgia Milestones, a test that measures how well students have learned the material outlined in the state’s content standards in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. Test scores are expected to be released Friday, but Rivera said Marietta continues to outpace the Georgia and metro Atlanta area in almost every subject area.