Students streamed into Lake Highlands High School in Dallas on a recent morning, briefly stopping in front of an assistant principal.
“Good morning! How are you?” the administrator asked while she locked each teenager’s cellphone in a gray pouch.
The greetings and sealings continued until students marched off to first period.
Principal Kerri Jones looked around the entry way in her sprawling campus of nearly 3,000 students. High schoolers were talking and joking. They looked each other in the eyes instead of burrowing into their screens.
“The hallways get loud,” Jones concedes. “But it’s a good loud.”
Lake Highlands is in its second year of requiring students to store their phones in Yondr pouches, which are magnetically sealed at the start of the day and unlocked by special devices at dismissal. They’ve become a model for other districts considering cellphone-free policies.
The Richardson Independent School District (RISD) in northern Dallas County was an early adopter of the pouches, and schools across the country are now spending millions on them. Meanwhile, some state leaders want to consider a statewide cellphone ban in classrooms.
Texas Education Commission Mike Morath endorsed such a move during a fall hearing, saying legislators should “consider that as a matter of public policy.”
Educators lament the way cellphones can distract from learning, exacerbate bullying and quickly spread false alarms about school safety.
But limiting access can come at a price: Yondr costs about $25 per student. RISD is paying roughly $300,000 to use the pouches at eight secondary campuses.
In return, officials say teachers get more instructional time and cellphone-related discipline incidents are down. One RISD principal said it helps with educator retention, too.
RISD is “really what I would consider the flagship district for Texas,” Yondr representative Luke Stultz said. “Districts from all across the state really look to Richardson as the gold standard for how to create a phone-free space.”
Survey data from Richardson showed most teachers on Yondr campuses felt the policy was effective and reduced classroom issues.
Among students, reception skewed more negative.
“Of course, no kid wants their phone taken,” Lake Highlands senior Adara McBeth said. Still, since the pouches came to campus, Adara has noticed that she’s more focused on assignments rather than constant notifications.
“It’s been very effective,” she said.
In Dallas ISD, which is piloting Yondr at a handful of campuses, a Change.org petition against the policy garnered more than 1,800 signatures.
“We understand that phone usage should be controlled during school hours to maintain focus on education and we are willing to put phones in pouches during class time,” reads the petition, which was launched by a Bryan Adams High student. “However, completely confiscating them all day seems excessive and disregards their role as crucial communication tools.”
Bryan Adams Principal Sarah Foster Arbaiza attributed the pushback to the idea that “students don’t know what they don’t know.”
“Students have been so accustomed to having a cellphone attached to their hand from such a young age that it is almost like prying away a piece of them, right?” she said.
The sentiment on campus has changed as students adjusted, she added.
“We’ve seen a huge decrease in instances of bullying, whether cyber bullying or in person, decreases in fighting, decreases in classroom disruptions,” Foster Arbaiza said. “I’ve just seen an overall increase in our positive school climate and culture.”
Principal Jones saw similar improvements at Lake Highlands.
Prior to the implementation of Yondr pouches, kids weren’t supposed to be on their phones at school. But that was essentially an unenforceable policy, Jones said.
She and other administrators spent hours each day confiscating students’ devices, while teachers repeatedly used class time to remind teens to keep phones silent and inside their backpacks.
Nevertheless, Jones said, it was common to find a student watching Netflix or monitoring a soccer game during class.
Students would message each other to hype up impending fights and then record the spectacles on their phones, the principal said. Then fight videos would quickly spread on social media, worrying families.
“That doesn’t happen anymore,” Jones said. Now, even if fights break out, she said other students tend to walk past the scuffle because they can’t whip out their phones to document it.
Last year, Lake Highlands had a 42% decrease in out-of-school suspensions and an 8% drop in in-school suspensions.
Some have raised concern that, without access to phones, students can’t reach their families in the event of an emergency.
Jones said students can always use school-issued Chromebooks to email parents or guardians during the day. In other emergencies – such as an active shooter incident – Jones wants kids to remain quiet and hide in their classrooms, without the potential for beeps or dings.
District officials would communicate with families in such a situation, before unlocking student phones once it was safe.
A lockdown helped convince math teacher Carolyn Vincent that Yondr pouches were necessary. During the incident a few years ago, while her students were supposed to be quietly huddling in the dark, she said they were instead taking selfies and joking with their phones.
“We need these cell phones locked up,” she thought.
Beyond that, Vincent also notices students interacting more now – with each other and with her, at the front of the classroom.
Officials acknowledged the system isn’t foolproof. Sometimes students will sneak burner phones in their backpacks. And schools still need to win over more parents.
To do that, administrators say, they know they must better explain the policy and benefits behind it.
To Jones, the reason is simple: “Teachers can teach,” she said. “When you walk into a classroom, kids are focused on the teacher.”