Jan. 4—Claremore’s state senator is taking another crack this year at banning students from using phones during the school day.
Sen. Ally Seifried, R-Claremore, filed Senate Bill 139 Monday. If passed, SB 139 would require all Oklahoma school districts to create a policy restricting phone use from first bell to last bell.
“I really believe that bell-to-bell is the best policy so that kids really can have those six to seven hours of uninterrupted time to be with their friends during breaks and then to focus on learning during the classroom times,” Seifried said. “That’s what I believe to be the best policy, and then the local school boards can really decide how they want to implement it.”
The bill would appropriate $2 million yearly for the State Department of Education to provide grants schools can use to ban phones how they see fit.
Seifried said schools wouldn’t be required to use the grants; all the bill mandates is a bell-to-bell phone ban. The only further stipulations the bill calls for are requiring disciplinary procedures and allowing certain exceptions, such as for emergencies or students with health issues.
Along with Sen. Adam Pugh, R-Edmond, Seifried held a legislative study in October on banning phones. Pugh and Seifried are the chair and vice-chair, respectively, of the Senate Education Committee.
She said the study revealed some schools would need state funds to craft a phone ban policy while others wouldn’t.
“I wanted them to be able to decide,” Seifried said. “This bill really does offer a lot of local control.”
Sequoyah Public Schools has banned cell phones bell-to-bell district-wide, as has Will Rogers Junior High in Claremore. Claremore High School and Inola Public Schools only ban phones during class.
Neither Sequoyah nor Will Rogers Junior High expended funds to ban phones — students must stow away devices in their lockers.
Last legislative session, Seifried put forth a bill to create a pilot phone ban program. Seifried said 15 schools of varying sizes could have applied for money for phone lockers or pouches. The schools would have also had to submit a basic report of how implementing the program went and how academic performance changed.
The bill did not make it through committee.
Seifried said she opted for a full ban and not a pilot program in SB 139 because support for the issue has grown among her colleagues. Gov. Kevin Stitt has encouraged schools to ban phones bell-to-bell, but he hasn’t said whether he’d support mandating it by law.
“I would say that most everyone agrees that phones shouldn’t be in the classroom, but where we might differ as a legislature would be in the implementation of it,” Seifried said.
Seifried said passing a phone ban would require the Legislature to work together and consider each school district’s individual needs.
She said it’s among her “very top” priorities this session, which begins at noon Feb. 3.
“This is the thing that I’ve been probably working on the longest and that can make the quickest impact for our kids and their teachers in trying to make our test scores go up and our discipline issues go down,” Seifried said.