What you need to know:
- The Mat-Su School Board is considering a districtwide ban on student cellphones and smartwatches during all school hours and activities, including lunch breaks. The ban would start in the 2025-26 school year.
- A yearlong pilot ban at three schools led to significant improvements in student learning and social interactions, officials said.. At Palmer High School, those included a dramatic increase in honor roll students and major drops in drug and alcohol use, reported bullying and disciplinary actions.
- If passed, the policy would be enforced through staff oversight and parent cooperation, officials said. The change also aligns with a pending state law requiring schools to regulate phone use. The policy will go before the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School Board for a vote later this month.
PALMER -- A proposal before the Mat-Su School Board this week would ban student cell phones in all Mat-Su schools starting next school year, including during lunch breaks.
If approved, the policy would prohibit phones for the entire school day. It would require students to turn off and store their phones during all regular school hours.
The ban would also apply to smartwatches capable of sending and receiving messages, including Apple Watches, officials said. Health-related exceptions would be allowed, according to the proposed policy.
The proposal is scheduled for introduction at a school board meeting on Wednesday, with a vote expected at a meeting scheduled for May 21. If approved, the policy would go into effect in August for the 2025-26 school year.
The proposed ban is intended to improve student health and learning, officials said, and expands on a current district policy requiring that student phones be turned off during class and not disrupt school activities.
The plan follows a one-year pilot ban implemented last fall at Palmer High School, Palmer Junior Middle School and Su-Valley Jr./Sr. High School, which officials said had a dramatically positive impact on students and staff.
At Palmer High, Principal Dave Booth credits the policy with a 50% increase in the number of students making the honor roll with a 3.0 or higher GPA. The policy also coincided with a significant year-over-year drop in drug and alcohol use at the school and a decrease in discipline rates, he said.
“We had a 43% decrease in our use of alcohol. Everything else was 70 to 80% as far as discipline, bullying, tobacco or vape use, drug use – all of those things just dropped,” he said. “We used to deal with a cyberbullying incident two or three times a week for years. I think this year we’ve had two total.”
Booth said he links those declines to students no longer being able to coordinate inappropriate behavior through messaging or isolate themselves with devices during lunch and activities.
Initially, some parents were concerned about students' ability to make contact during the day, Booth said. Today, those parents instead call the office to relay messages. If a student needs to contact home, they can take the phone to the office, make the call or send a text, and then turn it off, he said.
Booth said that parents also initially expressed concern about reaching students during a true emergency, such as an active shooter situation.
But keeping kids off their phones during such an incident could be a matter of life or death because a large influx of calls could overwhelm networks and hinder emergency response, he said. Phone sounds could also draw unwanted attention during such an incident, he said.
If approved, district officials plan to work with staff at each school to enforce the new rule, they said.
The pilot program initially used special locking pouches for student phones, but school administrators found them unnecessary and stopped using them early in the school year, opting instead to enforce the ban directly, district spokesman John Notestine said in a statement.
“We learned it is possible to achieve similar outcomes without the pouches if there is a strong policy in place, paired with consistent enforcement and parent support,” Notestine said.
Mat-Su's proposed ban also fulfills a requirement included in a school funding measure passed by state lawmakers and awaiting Gov. Mike Dunleavy's signature. If approved, that law would require Alaska school districts to develop their own policies regulating phone use during the school day or implement a state-mandated ban.
A draft version of the state policy was approved by the Alaska Board of Education and Early Development earlier this year.
This story was updated May 7 to correctly reflect Palmer High School Principal Dave Booth's name.
-- Contact Amy Bushatz at abushatz@matsusentinel.com
