CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The Kanawha County Board of Education has voted to approve a policy banning cell phones in the classroom.
This comes after Governor Patrick Morrisey signed HB 2003 into law back in April, which mandates each county school system to have a policy in place before the 2025-2026 school year prohibiting electronics from being in the classroom.
“I think the outcome from it will be very positive for students eventually, when they’re not as addicted to their phones, but it is going to be a learning curve for all of us,” Superintendent Paula Potter said during a Monday meeting.
Kanawha County’s policy bans elementary school and middle school students from having their devices during the entirety of the school day.
After taking public comments from principals, students and parents, the board decided to allow high school students to access their phones in between classes and during their lunch period. The phones must be put back in the student’s locker before entering the classroom.
The board and staff members discussed language in the new law stating that students could not have devices during “instructional time.” According to the board’s attorney, the law does not state that devices could not be accessed during non-instructional time outside the classroom.
If this time becomes unmanageable for Kanawha County teachers and principals, the high school could make students keep the devices in the locker for the entirety of the day for a three-day period.
Potter says high schoolers in the county shouldn’t be looking at the transitional time in between classes as a chance to check their status on social media.
“There probably won’t be enough transition time for them to go to their locker, get a book, and make a telephone call, so in my mind, that transition time of using the phone would be in an emergency situation where ythey have to text their parent real quick or something,” Potter said.
She says she can see issues down the road if high school students abuse the policy.
“I would like to make very clear that the best for Kanawha County students would to be to keep their phones in their lockers and not worry about it because it will become a discipline issue and we don’t want that,” Potter said. “I know we wouldn’t probably have come up with this policy, but the legislature does have a law, and we are charged with enforcing it.”
Board member Tracy White says this will be a difficult policy to adapt to for both students and faculty.
“It’s just going to be a hard time. If you took our phones away from us, it’s going to be hard,” White said. “It’s just something that we, as human beings now, are used to having that phone as our third body part.”
“It’s going to be a big, huge adjustment for all of them, and I feel for our staff on Friday,” White said.