Every North Carolina school board would be required to restrict the use of cellphones and other wireless communication devices in schools, with a few exceptions, under legislation passed by the North Carolina General Assembly this week.

It now goes to Governor Josh Stein's desk to potentially be signed into law. Stein has called for restricting cellphone use in schools.

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States across the country are attempting to crack down on cellphone use in schools through legislation outright restricting them or telling school boards to restrict them. A WRAL News investigation earlier this month found that policies by themselves don't solve the problem and that students and teachers said they have to be enforced in the right way to actually work.

If signed into law, House Bill 959 would require at least some school boards to alter the cellphone policies they've already passed that are stricter than what the legislation would require.

The bill would require school boards to regulate students' wireless communication devices -- including cellphones, tablets, laptops, pagers, two-way radios and gaming devices.

The boards would need to have a policy that would, at a minimum, require the devices to be turned off during instructional time. Boards would also be required to make exemptions for when a teacher authorizes their use for instruction or for an emergency and when a student's disability plan or health condition requires device access. Boards would need to establish consequences for violating the policy.

Some school board policies don't have exceptions for student health concerns or disability plans. And Johnston County Schools' new policy only allows teachers to make calls during emergencies. Others, such as Wake County's new policy, don't list required consequences for violating the policy, though some individual schools have them. Wake County allows cellphones to be confiscated or students to be punished as needed under the student code of conduct, but the policy doesn't say that a violation of it will yield a particular punishment.

Since this spring, the state Senate and the House of Representatives have been pushing competing bills on cellphones -- agreeing that they needed to be restricted but disagreeing on the extent.

But lawmakers reached a compromise this week on House Bill 959. It's built on Senate Bill 55's template but adds a part of House Bill 87, namely that students can use cellphones in case of an emergency.

On Wednesday, Senator Jay Chaudhuri, D-Wake, a sponsor of the Senate bill, thanked Senator Michael Lee, R-New Hanover, and Representative Jim Burgin, R-Harnett, for their help in getting the bill passed.

"This bill is a good start," Chaudhuri said. "And, yes, while I recognize that parents remain concerned about their inability to communicate with their children in school, I believe that we should extend the cellphone restriction from bell to bell, not just [during] classroom instruction... Our schools need to be sanctuaries of learning."

House Bill 959 would also require schools to teach students social media literacy, ban access to TikTok on campus, ban teachers from using TikTok to promote school activities and require schools to implement certain internet safety and security measures, if they haven't already.

Social media literacy lessons would focus significantly on the negative consequences of social media use, teaching about social media addiction, misinformation and manipulation. It would also teach students about how to protect themselves, identify cyberbullying and predatory behavior, and report suspicious behavior. Students would also learn "interpersonal skills or character education" that would help them further protect themselves and reduce risky or harmful behavior.