With just about a month to go before the state-mandated deadline for adopting a cell phone policy, the Madison school district is poised to ban cell phone use by high schoolers — but only during classes. A coalition of parents and teachers argues the policy should go further and also ban use between classes, and during lunch. That is, no phone use from starting bell to ending bell. 

“Many teachers [say] that when they call for behavior support to help them with a student who refuses to put their phone away, no one comes,” testified Amy Martino, a co-founder of Parent Check on Tech, at a May 18 school board meeting. “Teachers are desperate for more administrative and behavior support, or frankly, any support.” 

Martino, a mom to two elementary school students in the district, co-founded Parent Check on Tech this spring to advocate for all-day cell phone bans in Madison schools. She and co-founder Jacqui Shore, president of the Thoreau Elementary parent teacher organization, recently distributed a five-question survey to 300 high school teachers within the district. 

More than half of the teachers contacted — 165 — returned the survey and they were overwhelmingly in favor of an all-day ban on devices. “Not only are we trying to teach the lesson we have planned, but also trying to monitor 25+ students to make sure they are not on their phones,” wrote one high school teacher. “The No. 1 thing that would make me quit teaching is cell phones.”

“I frequently have to make a judgment call as to whether it's worth grinding class to a halt to deal with one recalcitrant student or to let one student's phone use slide for the sake of continuing class for everyone else,” wrote another teacher. Others described observing students show addictive tendencies with their phones, or feeling helpless when enforcing phone restrictions in the classroom. 

“Help students. Help teachers,” Shore pleaded to the school board at their May 18 meeting. “The current proposal does not significantly change any of the standing cell phone policies — and what we have now is not working.” 

The school board is facing a July 1 deadline to enact a district-wide policy under a state law signed last October by Gov. Tony Evers. The law mandates that all Wisconsin school districts adopt a policy on wireless communication devices including cell phones, laptops, tablets and gaming devices. 

Madison’s current policy permits all students, K-12, to possess electronic devices, including cell phones, but they must refrain from using devices “in a manner that detracts from and/or disrupts the learning of oneself or others.” Devices also can’t be used in bathrooms, locker rooms, and other dressing areas. 

As of now, Madison is the only Wisconsin school district among the 10 largest in the state that lacks a district-wide policy on device restriction. The largest district, Milwaukee, has a bell-to-bell policy that bans cell phone use “on school premises during the school day.” 

In a draft policy under consideration by the school board, students in elementary and middle schools would need to turn off and store devices — a so-called off-and-away policy — at the start of the day and not retrieve them until after classes are over. High schoolers would be allowed to access their devices during open lunch and passing periods. The policy also lists exceptions for emergencies, health needs and individualized education plans. 

Adopting a stricter cell phone policy use has critics — including students. As part of an analysis prepared this spring by graduate students at UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, 937 students were surveyed across the district on their current device use and their thoughts about more restrictive policies. 

While “the majority of students do not anticipate that a district-wide ‘off-and-away’ policy would have a substantial impact on them,” wrote researchers, high school respondents were the least receptive to the idea — 37% of high schoolers predicted feeling “less calm” under a more restrictive policy and 34% said they’d feel “less safe and comfortable” with off-and-away. 

The survey also asked staff and teachers, “who will be on the front lines of implementing the new device policy,” for their thoughts. Of the 511 staff surveyed, “respondents overwhelmingly anticipate that an ‘off-and-away’ policy would have a positive impact across all factors.” 

The same report also found, based on school district data, that low-income and students of color continue to be overrepresented in being punished for using their devices. “Black and Latino students in the district represented the biggest portion of incidents and experienced the most severe discipline levels. Low-income students were also overrepresented,” wrote the researchers, adding that the association “becomes even clearer” when race and income are intertwined. 

This school year, Black low-income students, who account for about 15% of the student body, made up nearly 43% of documented device infractions. Latino low-income students, who make up about 16% of the body, followed with nearly 23% of documented infractions. 

The UW report also noted that low-income students were more likely to use their devices for safety and emergency purposes and could be more negatively impacted by a stricter ban than their non-low-income classmates. The researchers assert that any policy in which students are able to keep their devices on hand causes more teacher initiated enforcement, and ultimately increases the likelihood for unequal discipline outcomes. 

The school district’s proposed policy was discussed by an instructional work group on May 4, and at a full board retreat on May 22. The full board needs to vote on the policy within the next six weeks. 

In the meantime, Martino and Shore will hold a formal “tech kickoff” for their group at Sequoya Library on May 27. Lobbying the school board for more restrictive cell phone policies is part of their larger goal of giving support to parents who want to raise kids to have healthy relationships with technology. They’re concerned about the “overuse of tech in schools and lack of Big Tech accountability,” says Martino, who adds that in the short term, “I think the proposed policy is missing a huge opportunity to improve the school climate for high schoolers.”