Nantucket High School Considering Bell-To-Bell Cell Phone Ban
JohnCarl McGrady •
A new cell phone policy proposed by the Nantucket Public Schools (NPS) for the High School and Middle School would implement a “bell-to-bell” restriction on such devices, requiring students to place their phones and other personal electronics in secure, magnetically locked bags at the start of each school day, only retrieving them after the final bell. To pass, the policy will need the support of the majority of the five-member Nantucket School Committee, which will vote on the draft policy at a special meeting on Friday.
“Nantucket Public Schools is committed to fostering a school environment that prioritizes engaged learning, supports the development of social skills, and promotes the overall well-being of our students. To achieve this, Nantucket Public Schools is a cell phone-free community,” the policy reads in part.
"My hope is that by implementing this policy, students spend more time interacting with each other rather than their phones,” Nantucket High School principal Mandy Hilemn said.
If adopted, this policy would be a shift from the school’s current policy for personal electronics, which mandates that students turn in their electronics at a designated location at the start of each class but allows access during lunch and passing periods between classes. Exceptions would be allowed for students with medical conditions or disabilities that require them to use personal electronics, and students could access their devices with administration approval—for instance, if they need to call a parent.
The draft policy was discussed at a School Committee meeting on Tuesday, with several Committee members and student representatives raising concerns about students being unable to access their phones during potential emergency situations such as a mass shooting.
"The only question that keeps me up is extreme emergency situations,” School Committee member Vince Murphy said.
"If there is a dangerous situation, it can be scary not to be able to contact home,” student representative Cecillia Wendelken said, referencing the 2019 false-alarm lockdown that many students believed at the time was caused by an active shooter.
Murphy and fellow School Committee member Shantaw Bloise-Murphy both asked for more magnets throughout the school to make it easier to unlock devices in an emergency situation.
Superintendent Elizabeth Hallett pushed back against this request. “That is one of the most dangerous things, to have that kind of interference,” she said. “I want to make it clear that if there are emergencies, there are numerous outgoing phones that can be used to call parents across the district, across the school. There is always a way to reach parents.”
Otherwise, School Committee members broadly suggested support for the draft policy.
The policy for the Intermediate and Elementary Schools would be different, allowing students to keep their devices in their bags or backpacks as long as they are not used during the day. While there was initially some confusion, Hallett clarified that students in the Middle and High Schools would continue to keep the bags with their locked phones throughout the day; they just wouldn’t be able to unlock the bags.
The proposal comes amidst mounting evidence that teen cellphone use dramatically exacerbates mental health issues and slashes attention spans. Phone use is also tied to social isolation and suicide risk. Some evidence suggests that the mere presence of a phone, even if it is not accessed, reduces cognitive performance.
“Increased digital media and smartphone use may influence mental health via several mechanisms, including displacement of time spent in in‐person social interactions, individually and across the generation, as adolescent cultural norms evolve; disruption of in‐person social interactions; interference with sleep time and quality; cyberbullying and toxic online environments; and online contagion and information about self‐harm,” psychologist Jean Twenge wrote in a 2020 paper on the subject.
Teachers nationwide broadly oppose the use of phones in schools, with large majorities citing it as one of the problems facing education in the country.
“My thought is that from the teachers' perspective, it would just be one thing that they don't have to try to navigate,” Hilemn said.
Some students expressed trepidation towards the new policy, which was presented to them at an assembly on Monday.
“My concern with the policy is that the absence of cell phones will create even more distractions, causing students to lose focus on their studies and become overly concerned with what’s happening on their phones,” rising Nantucket High School junior Bodhi Buccino said. “This could lead to missed important information that they can’t access until the end of the day.”
Hilemn said that the evidence NPS reviewed suggests students may initially struggle with the policy, but will come to prefer it within a few weeks.
If the policy is passed, Nantucket will join Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School (MVRHS), which implemented a similar policy last August after a 5-3 vote from its school committee.
“MVRHS has been really pleased with how [the new policy] has worked. It has impacted the classroom culture and the overall school culture. We were initially worried that there would be backlash and it would be really hard to enforce, but overall, we have not seen many phones out during the day. We are so happy we implemented it,” MVRHS principal Sarah Dingledy wrote in an email to the Current.
The MVRHS policy is more strict, delineating punishments for violations that include detention and in-school suspension, while the only punishments specifically mentioned in Nantucket’s proposed policy are meeting with the parents of violators, revoking their ability to bring devices to school, and attempting to address the root causes of violations.
“We have worked for the last couple years on implementing restorative [justice] practices,” Hilemn said, in reference to the school’s disciplinary procedures. “We find that it's more beneficial to have conversations with students and get to the root cause.”
Twenty-five states in the U.S. currently require policies limiting the use of phones in schools, and four states ban them outright. Massachusetts may soon join the list. Earlier this year, Attorney General Andrea Campbell proposed the Safe Technology Use and Distraction-free education for Youth, or “STUDY” Act, which would require schools to block students from using phones during the school day, much as Nantucket is proposing now.
“The STUDY Act puts students and their mental health first. By restricting cellphones during the school day and raising the bar for social media companies, we are taking bold steps to create learning environments free from distraction and a digital landscape that prioritizes the well-being of our youth. This bill is a commitment to both education and mental health for our young people, ensuring they have the tools to succeed without unnecessary harm,” Campbell said.
Co-sponsored by Nantucket’s representative to the state Senate, Julian Cyr, the STUDY Act would also mandate education about the potential harms of social media and would propose standards for social media companies to meet.
“I'm so glad I went to middle school and high school before the advent of social media. I truly believe my education and social development were all the better for not having a smartphone on me at all times. By creating a 'bell-to-bell' policy, we're giving students the opportunity to engage with their education unfettered by digital distraction,” Cyr said.
NPS already planned to propose a policy banning phones during the school day before the STUDY Act was proposed, after meeting with MVRHS leaders and hearing about the success of their program.
The STUDY Act was discussed before the Joint Committee on Education on Tuesday. While there was disagreement about the act’s proposed social media restrictions outside of school, the bell-to-bell restriction received broad support.
"The country is in the midst of a youth mental health crisis,” Secretary of Education Patrick Tutwiler said at the hearing. "The research is clear. Cellphones in classrooms aren't just a distraction; they're contributing to the rise of anxiety.”