Cellphone ban in K-12 schools will not begin immediately, SC education officials say

Public school students across South Carolina will be barred from using their cellphones during the school day under a clause legislators agreed to add to the state spending plan Thursday, June 13, 2024. (File/Getty Images)

COLUMBIA — It could be January before a new law barring K-12 students in South Carolina from using their cellphones in class takes effect, according to a memo from the state’s education agency.

A clause included in the state budget requires districts to adopt a policy banning cellphones during the school day or risk losing state funding. But the State Board of Education, which the law tasks with approving the policy, doesn’t even meet again until Aug. 13. So, that’s the earliest a state policy could be approved, according to the memo that went to district officials statewide last Thursday.

All but three of the state’s public school districts will be back in session by then.

District officials worried that might mean their districts would risk losing state money because they had not adopted a policy that didn’t yet exist, said Scott Price, executive director of the South Carolina School Boards Association.

SC budget to ban cellphones in K-12 schools

“Timing was an issue,” Price told the SC Daily Gazette on Tuesday. “You have schools starting earlier and earlier.”

The state Department of Education plans to have a model policy ready to approve by the August meeting, which would allow for local school boards to adopt it by September or October, according to the memo sent out last Thursday.

In the meantime, school districts will not lose any state money for not having a ban in place, education department spokesman Jason Raven confirmed Tuesday.

The goal is to have the ban in place in every district across the state by the time districts begin their second semester in January, according to the memo.

The memo did not specify a date for when districts would begin to lose funding for not having a ban.

However, Department of Education officials expect all districts should be able and will want to have the policy in place by January, Raven said.

Teachers and administrators have been asking state officials to help curb cellphone use in classroom for years.

“We are confident that with the right policy and communication, school districts will want to adopt the policy as soon as reasonably possible,” Raven said in an email.

The updated timeline gives school board members “more breathing room” to review and adopt policies, Price said.

“That makes it not quite so much of a hair-on-fire moment,” Price said.

While the budget clause says the policy must ban students from using their phones during the school day, the board will need to decide what, exactly, that will look like, Price said.

How districts should enforce the policy is one lingering question. Whether students will be allowed to have a phone on them as long as they aren’t using it, or if they will have to leave it in a locker or at home is another question, he said.

Teacher support

In a statewide survey the education department conducted, thousands of teachers said phones frequently disrupted class time and called for some sort of ban, according to data included in the memo.

Of the nearly 10,000 teachers and administrators who responded to the survey, 56% said cellphones were a daily disruption in all or most of their classes, and 55% said they supported a total ban.

Another 37% said they wanted students to have limited access to cellphones during class time and relaxed rules between classes and during lunch.

Despite most teachers calling cellphones a disruption, 60% said they lost less than 30 minutes of instructional time to phone-related disruptions each day, the survey found.

However, in part of the survey that allowed teachers to submit specific concerns, many wrote that they saw behavioral issues, distractions from learning and cheating come from phone usage, according to the education department.

Although the ban has overwhelming support from teachers, parents may not be quite as pleased with the new rule, Price said.

Parents concerned they won’t be able to reach their children in case of an issue or emergency will be more likely to go to the local school board than state officials, possibly causing friction when boards go to adopt the new policy, he said.

“In this day and age, parents want access to their children during the day,” Price said.

That will be something the board has to balance against the disruptions caused by students having cellphones during class time, Weaver said at a May board meeting.

“While we certainly don’t want to ever deny a parent access to their child, at the same time, I think we have to balance these very real safety and instructional concerns that cellphones create,” Weaver said at the time.

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