School cellphone ban moving forward in NC House

North Carolina lawmakers gave a stamp of approval Tuesday to a proposal to restrict cellphone use in public schools.

A House judiciary committee passed House Bill 87, which would require each school district to adopt a policy that either bans cellphone use or restricts it during class time. Members of the state Senate already passed a similar bill. The House bill has yet to come up for a vote in either chamber.

Rep. Neal Jackson, R-Moore, is the lead sponsor of the House bill. He said he's heard from many people who have ideas on how exactly to implement the bans, but he doesn't want to micromanage this bill, which will instead just require local school boards to have a policy, and to figure out the details for themselves.

"Our thought is these school boards are smart people that are elected," Jackson said. "They can flesh out the policy. They don't need someone from Raleigh telling them all the specifics of how this needs to work."

About two-thirds of the state's school districts already have policies on cell phone use. Some schools require students to leave phones in locked pouches all day. Others have phone bins at the front of each classroom, but allow students to use their phones between classes.

Both bills, if enacted, would take effect next school year. And the odds of lawmakers adopting a new law are high.

The House and Senate phone ban proposals, both introduced by Republicans, enjoy bipartisan support. The Senate proposal passed 41-1. Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, has also said he wants to restrict cellphone use in the classroom. Stein has called cellphones a "major distraction" for students and a "disruption" for teachers, who have to compete with social media for students' attention.

Several supporters of cell phone bans spoke during the meeting, all encouraging lawmakers to go further than the bill currently proposes and write more rules into the law instead of letting local school boards choose all the details.

Mary Anne Tierney traveled from Buncombe County to Raleigh to speak on the proposal, saying lawmakers need to make the rules stricter to ensure that school districts enforce cell phone bans during the entire school day, not just during class time.

Karl Johnson, a public health professor at UNC-Chapel Hill who said he has done work on bullying research, urged more attention on situations where kids can still access phones outside of class, such as in the bathroom. He also said the legislature should consider paying for schools to buy pouches where students' phones can be stored away from them all day long.

"There are many emerging technologies to restrict access in a way that's not dependent on policing by individual teachers," he said. "The two most common being lockable pouches and storage lockers. Without these technologies, policy enforcement becomes burdensome for teachers even in the most supportive of conditions."