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Restrictions on students' cellphones are becoming more common in public schools across the country. Florida banned them statewide last year. Indiana's ban went into effect this school year, as does one in Los Angeles. Rachel Cohen from the Mountain West News Bureau visited a Colorado school in the first week of its new cellphone ban to see how it's working.
RACHEL COHEN, BYLINE: It's the third day of school at Doherty High in Colorado Springs. Seventeen hundred teenagers filed through the doors as security guard Lonny Barrett checks IDs.
LONNY BARRETT: Good morning. Thank you.
COHEN: This year he's also inspecting cellphones.
BARRETT: Can I see your phone?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Sure.
COHEN: According to a new policy, students are given special pouches to keep their phones in all day. Barrett checks each one.
BARRETT: What is this? This isn't a phone. This is a box of Extra gum. How much you want to bet?
COHEN: Barrett says this happens a few times each morning.
BARRETT: They'll put, like, empty cases or even an old, broken phone that doesn't even work anymore. They'll try to put that in there and sneak it past us. So it's been entertaining.
COHEN: Principal Hillary Hienton explains the gray fabric pouches, designed by a company called Yondr, magnetically lock. Students unlock them at a magnet station at the end of the day.
HILLARY HIENTON: And so you just hit one on the side of the Yondr pouch to the magnet.
COHEN: The district spent more than $300,000 on 11,000 pouches for middle and high schoolers. Hienton says after students came back from learning at home during the pandemic, rampant cellphone use reached a point where something had to be done.
HIENTON: In classrooms, it turned into a lot of power struggles. Students didn't want to put their phones away or give up their phones.
COHEN: She also says research shows social media and cellphones can be harmful for youth mental health.
JIM FOUDY: This is the best policy change we've ever made in my career of 28 years.
COHEN: Jim Foudy is a superintendent of a small school district in Idaho that banned cellphones last year. He says it's gone smoothly.
FOUDY: We actually have hired a teacher who had a few different job offers and said that he chose to work for Blaine County because this policy was in place.
COHEN: Doherty High School English teacher Erin Ahnfeldt says he feels like he did when he began teaching, before smartphones were everywhere.
ERIN AHNFELDT: I think it's a courageous move.
COHEN: In the first week, he's already noticed a difference. Last year when he gave students a break between lessons, they'd pick up their phones.
AHNFELDT: And then this year, every time I give them a five-minute break, they just talk to each other. So then that makes the feel of a community in a classroom way more powerful.
ELI HOWARD: I hate this new phone system a lot.
COHEN: Eli Howard is a junior. He doesn't think the policy will make students pay attention in class, and he worries about safety. Earlier in the morning, the school was put on a hold during a potential emergency. It turned out to be nothing, but Howard was scared.
HOWARD: Like, I was like, dude, what if there's someone in here and I can't - my mom and dad - I can't talk to them?
COHEN: Some parents also worry about reaching their children in emergencies. Principal Hienton has this answer when students ask why the school is doing this to them.
HIENTON: I say, I care about you, and I care about your education, and I want to make sure that you have the tools and the skills and the competencies that are going to make you successful in life.
COHEN: She says phones are a distraction from that success. For NPR News, I'm Rachel Cohen in Colorado Springs.
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