For the 2026-27 school year, Kansas will join 22 other states and the District of Columbia with a bell-to-bell cell phone ban in K-12 schools. Senate Substitute for Substitute HB2299, approved by Kansas Governor Laura Kelly on March 19, will affect all public and accredited private schools in the state. 

The bill mandates that students must shut off and store away cell phones and any other personal electronic devices from the first to final bell of the school day when they are on school premises. This excludes district-issued devices and any devices approved by an individualized educational program, 504 plan or designated for medical use.

Prior to the bill, Kansas had no state-wide policy regarding cellphones. In 2024, the Kansas Board of Education encouraged school districts to regulate cell phone use in the classroom, but policies were still completely up to individual school districts. 

Now, school districts will need to adopt policies that comply with the new law, although how these policies will be enforced is still up to school districts.

“We must have one uniform standard across the state to tackle this issue and set our students up for success,” said Kelly in a press release. “By banning cell phone use during the school day, we’re taking a commonsense approach to address the impact smartphones and social media have on Kansas children’s academic performance, learning environments, and mental health.”

The ban has sparked some controversy about whether or not it is realistic to implement, its override of existing district phone policies and the costs associated with implementing the policy. Opponents have also raised concern about emergency situations where a student may need to access their phone. The bill states that students are able to contact their parents or guardians using a school phone.

Sophomore Franchesqua Hugi-McKeel is an elementary education unified major at Emporia State. She thinks that electronic device policies should be left up to individual school districts. While she says cell phones should not be tolerated in the classroom during educational time, she also believes not allowing students to have their devices on their person presents a safety issue.

“From a child-advocacy point of view, just because of the fact that I am trauma informed … I think that school shootings are way too common for us to ban one of our only ways to contact the police,” she said. 

Cell phones also act as a sort of “protection” for students, Hugi-McKeel went on to say, allowing them to record evidence of harm, such as in instances of pedophilia in schools. 

However, Hugi-McKeel also recognizes that allowing cell phones in the classroom can be harmful and negatively affect academics. This can lead to educators feeling “desperate” to raise academic standards. As a 2024 graduate of Leavenworth High School, which did not have a strict phone policy, she witnessed the negative effects of cell phones during instruction. 

“From a social standpoint … It was nice to have the freedom (to have a phone in class),” she said. “But just from an educational standpoint, I really hated it. And there was that inner teacher in me, back then even, that was like, I hate the fact that, like, everyone can just pull out their phone because bullying and harassment was such an extremely common thing.”

Another major concern was raised by Sheryl Vanderharr, freshman Music Education Major. She mentioned that it may cost schools a lot of money to implement a cell phone ban, and that rural or smaller schools will not have the funding to effectively follow the government’s policies.

Blue Valley Schools superintendent Gillian Chapman told KSHB 41 that it would cost their school district roughly 3.5 to 4 million dollars to implement when they already have an effective cell phone policy of their own. 

Rene Stanley has been an English teacher for 21 years at Independence High School in Independence, Kansas. IHS instituted their own zero tolerance policy for electronic devices in the classroom for the 2022-2023 school year and has upheld the policy ever since. 

Before IHS’s phone policy went into effect, it was up to the teachers to decide what their classroom policy on electronic devices would be. Stanley’s personal classroom rules only allowed phone use for her advisory and yearbook classes. In the rest of her classes, phones were meant to be “out of sight and silent.” 

According to Stanley, IHS’s zero tolerance policy stated that cell phones were not to be on a student’s person during class time, and teachers were required to confiscate the phone and write an office referral if they were to see one. However, unlike Kansas’ bell-to-bell ban, IHS students were allowed to use their devices during passing periods and lunch. 

Stanley was in favor of IHS’s phone policy, she told The Bulletin, although it caused minor inconveniences to her yearbook staff since they could not use their cell phones for interviews or photos. She said that as a result of the policy, more students began reading for pleasure, with the school librarian reporting that the number of books checked out from the library had doubled. 

In January 2023, IHS issued MacBooks to all of its students, and Stanley said this is where things took a turn. Students innovated ways to use their school computers to communicate with one another, utilizing their school emails and shared Google Docs. Academic dishonesty “skyrocketed” and students felt “emboldened” to ignore the policy and carry their cell phones into the classroom again, Stanley said. 

“All of the benefits we’d previously seen as a result of the cell phone ban (increased student reading, conversation, and curiosity) were now gone because students were able to mindlessly scroll,” she said. “We replaced one device with another, and our cell phone ban no longer seemed to have the teeth or impact it once had.”

Stanley supports Kansas’ bell-to-bell ban, but does not expect it to be as effective as Kansas lawmakers hope based on her personal experience. She wishes the bill extended to all personal electronics, even school-issued devices, because any access to an electronic device allows students to become distracted. 

In other words, students will always find a way to digitally communicate with one another and access non-educational content. 

“Technology and electronic devices in the classroom are a distraction rather than a tool,” she said. “All of the research regarding children and screen time is alarming, and I hate that the public school system is responsible for having doubled, if not tripled, each child’s daily exposure to screens.”