[Updated Dec. 9 at 2:07 p.m.] At the Dec. 5 school board meeting, Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt, Ed.D., and Policy Consultant Matt Smith unveiled a regulation that will ban cell phones at Alexandria schools from bell to bell. The proposed regulation, which is subject to school board approval, complies with Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) executive order to create “cell phone-free schools” in Virginia by Jan. 2025.
The executive order prohibits students from using their phones at any point in the school day, from the first bell in the morning to the last bell of dismissal. Initially, it was unclear how Alexandria’s school district would respond, but the district’s proposed regulation fully complies with the order. (It does, though, contain exceptions that permit the ongoing usage of Minga digital student IDs and hall passes for the remainder of the 2024-25 school year.) The school board will vote to approve the proposed regulation at the December 19 school board meeting. If approved, it will be implemented after students return from winter break.
[Curious about student and staff views of Minga? Read Theogony’s coverage here.]
One major change with the proposed regulation is that teachers will no longer have the authority to determine the appropriate rules for cell phone use in their individual classrooms. Now, all teachers must abide by the full student ban. The proposed regulation specifies that the phones must be placed in a “school-identified secure location” such as a backpack, locked pouch, locker, or “designated place in the classroom.” (It explicitly states that students may not keep phones in their pockets.) They cannot be accessed during any point throughout the school day, according to the proposed regulation.
One concern from parents and students after Youngkin initially released the order was that students would not be able to contact parents in the case of an emergency. The proposed regulation acknowledges this concern and includes a procedure for emergencies: “Administrators may make exceptions as appropriate in emergencies which should be included in the school’s emergency response plan.”
The proposed regulation, which does not include suggested consequences for violations, received widespread support from school board members.
“The bottom line is that cell phones are having an impact on people’s social-emotional well-being,” said Meagan Alderton, a member from District C. “They are, whether we like it or not.”
Tammy Ignacio, a member from District B, noted that other school districts have already implemented similar policies.
“One of our neighboring jurisdictions … decided to pilot [self-locking phone] pouches,” she said. “The level of engagement in the classroom and in the hallway and other places has gone up significantly, and the … bullying and fighting … have almost completely ended.”
“It’s pretty amazing,” she added. “You don’t think that it’s going to work with high school kids, but it works.”
One voice on the dais, senior Zeinab Yassin, the student representative to the school board, expressed concerns that some classes rely on phones and that student computers are not adequate for some types of schoolwork.
“I know there are a lot of electives, like entrepreneurship and newspaper, that use their phones to participate in the class,” Yassin said. “So I don’t know how that’s going to work with the policy.”
“In my data science class, there are coding websites that are blocked,” she added. “[The blocking software] needs to change.”
Kay-Wyatt said that the district’s hands are tied, as the executive order does not provide exceptions for that.
“I want to make this very clear,” she said. “This is not driven by [the school district]. This is driven by our governor from an executive order.”
Alexandria’s legislative director, Sarah Taylor, previously told Theogony that the governor has no mechanism to enforce executive orders on public schools.
Kay-Wyatt also highlighted the efforts by Yassin and senior James Libresco to collect student feedback, which she said her team incorporated when developing the proposed policy.
“I want to thank [ACHS Executive Principal Alexander] Duncan and his student advisory team,” she said. “We did look at that student data, so I just want all the students to know that. … We know there was a lot of work … put into that.”
On the statewide level, though, Smith noted that those key stakeholders were left out.
“When you read the actual guidance that came from the state and all people that they talked to,” Smith said, “notably absent, were students. They didn’t actually talk to students when they did this.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article said that the proposed regulation does not allow students to store cell phones in their backpacks. However, the policy actually does consider student backpacks as an appropriate location to store cell phones. The article has been updated to reflect this information. Theogony regrets the error.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated to clarify that the proposed regulation permits Minga digital student IDs and hall passes for the remainder of the 2024-25 school year. Previously, it did not specify that information.
Isabel Shultz and James Libresco contributed reporting.
James Libresco led the Executive Principal’s Advisory Council in collecting student feedback about phone policies through his role as student body president. This has not biased his reporting.
