Local advocates for cellphone-free schools scored two victories Thursday night. The Arlington Public Schools board approved a new policy that requires elementary and middle school students to turn off their cellphones throughout the school day and high school students to turn them off and put them away during class time. That same day, the Virginia Department of Education released its own proposal for a cellphone ban in schools across the state, calling for the devices to be banned for all students throughout the day.

Arlington School Superintendent Francisco Durán says the new directive from his office, which replaces a more detailed long-term policy to be announced by the county school board in December, codifies what many schools have already done.

“Each school has developed its own approach,” says Durán. “We have received a lot of feedback from teachers and principals who have asked us to give us some tips.”

Arlington is the latest district to join the nationwide campaign to restrict cell phone use for students. Six Virginia districts, including Fairfax, have already enacted stricter bans for the new year. Some Maryland districts are also cracking down on cell phones, but there has been no large-scale effort in Washington, DC.

Some of the bans, including the one in Arlington, were enacted before Gov. Glenn Youngkin directed his Department of Education to crack down on cell phones in July. When the final state guidelines are released in September (after a public comment period), districts will be required to adjust their own rules by Jan. 1. At Thursday’s board meeting, Durán said his team will ensure compliance with state guidelines as they work on the permanent Arlington policy.

The movement to wean children off cell phones has gained momentum this year, and teachers and parents generally agree that they are in favor of it.

Liza Schalch, a former Arlington teacher and co-founder of DMV Unplugged, an organization that advocates for banning cellphones — and screens in general — from schools, sees Arlington’s new policy and the governor’s order as progress. But she worries that the part of Arlington’s policy that affects high schools doesn’t go far enough.

“The entire school day is class time for the students,” says Schalch. “They are not only learning math, but also how to interact with their classmates and adults. The ability to have cell phones during recess ensures the continuation of a phone-centric student culture. And that is unacceptable to me.”

At the board meeting in Arlington, citizens supported the directive and demanded that the final policy also ban cell phones for high school students throughout the day.

Jack Couture, 18, graduated this year from Washington-Liberty High School in Arlington. He says he frequently saw other students on their cell phones during class, even though it was strictly prohibited. But, he notes, a “bell-to-bell” ban for high school students would cut off communication with parents — and his own family was the reason he got a cell phone in the first place.

“I think they would be happy if I didn’t use social media during school hours and could be productive, but during the day I do a lot of digital communication on my phone and they don’t want to lose that,” he says.

June Prakash, president of the Arlington Education Association, a teachers’ union, says she has also observed that parents have become accustomed to having access to their children at all times. Parental resistance to phone restrictions, she says, generally stems from this fear.

Prakash is a strong supporter of a cell phone ban and hopes that school policies will also include enforcement mechanisms that will not burden teachers with more work. According to Arlington rules, after repeated requests to put their students away, teachers refer them to school administration, and school administration takes care of the rest. “This policy will be an additional call for some educators to monitor and enforce cell phone putting away,” she says. “Educators will need parental support for this policy.”

It hasn’t been determined yet where schools will actually keep students’ phones. Arlington is considering a pilot program at some schools that would keep middle and high school students’ phones in locked electronic bags, but the county hasn’t decided whether that would apply to class periods or all day. Fairfax County, where cellphones have been banned since 2022 under new Arlington rules, will implement a similar bag pilot program this year after complaints that the previous rules—which also banned mobile phones during classes in secondary schools—didn’t work.