As students across the state of Oregon return to school this week and next, cell phone policies in high schools still vary widely, but there are clear signs that a broader and more universal approach is planned.

Some of the largest schools in the Portland metropolitan area are experimenting with locking away cell phones, Bluetooth-compatible earbuds and smartwatches during the day, using either individual lockable bags — in the North Clackamas School District and at Grant and Cleveland high schools and Beaumont Middle School in Portland — or lockable boxes in every classroom, like at Lincoln High School.

Some of these schools allow students to access their cell phones during recess and lunchtime, while others have banned cell phones throughout the school day. Other districts are more explicit about disciplinary consequences for cell phone violations than in previous years, and are placing responsibility for enforcement on administrative staff rather than individual teachers.

Curtis Wilson, the principal of Benson High in Portland, said this week that his staff is insisting that the school’s absence policy must be more strictly and universally enforced than in previous years, rather than left to individual teachers.

“We dug up our old policy and we’re going to stick with it,” he said. “We want the classrooms back. In some rooms, they have phones hanging around everywhere or they’re doing TikTok in the hallways. We want the kids to be more engaged throughout the day.”

Some students, however, were more skeptical. Cameron Root, a 12th-grader at Benson School, said he believes the crackdown at his school will “continue for a while, but there will be cases where it doesn’t work. People will break the rules.”

Root added that he personally doesn’t mind the stricter enforcement, as long as students are allowed to “take a break from their phones in some cases.” That option won’t be available at Cleveland High School, where students have been told not to use their phones at all between 8:26 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. The school plans to conduct spot checks throughout the year to make sure students are keeping their phones safely stowed in their bags, according to an FAQ sent to families this week.

The move comes as other states are already banning cellphone use altogether, and Oregon state politicians have indicated that the move may be in the pipeline when the legislature reconvenes in January.

In neighboring Washington, Chris Reykdal, the state’s education secretary, on Wednesday called on all school districts to update and revise their cell phone policies to ensure uniformity across all classrooms and grade levels.

The changes come at a time of growing concern about Generation Z’s addiction to smartphones and the resulting impact on their mental health and social skills. In a survey conducted for the Pew Research Center in fall 2023, 72% of high school teachers said cell phones were a major source of distraction for their students during class. Meanwhile, regions and countries that have implemented system-wide cell phone bans in schools are reporting encouraging results: a decline in bullying in Spain and better academic outcomes in England, especially for students from lower-income families.

Portland Public Schools, the state’s largest school district, is considering a districtwide policy that would allow teachers and other school employees to confiscate a phone until a parent or guardian can come to school to pick it up if a student is caught using their phone during class.

In nearby North Clackamas, the 17,000-student school district has spent $300,000 to buy lockable bags for each of its middle and high school students, which it will distribute next week. Students will be expected to put their devices in the bags at the beginning of each school day and not open them until the end of the day, the district wrote in an email to parents.

Board members agreed to purchase the bags after years of pursuing a zero-tolerance approach and trying it every now and then, the district wrote in a recent email to families.

“Research shows that (a zero-tolerance approach) has been ineffective nationwide, including in our district,” it said. “There is unnecessary relational tension between the adults trying to enforce the rules and the students trying to get to their devices.”

Parents have raised questions about how to reach their children in the event of an emergency, but North Clackamas officials say students quickly texting their parents can overload cell tower capacity, spread misinformation and be a distraction when students should be following emergency protocols.

Lake Oswego school board members this week signed off on plans to tighten their district’s enforcement policies on child absences. Starting this school year, high school students’ cellphones can be confiscated and will only be accessible to a parent or guardian if they use the devices during class.

Drishti Singh, an 11th-grader at Lake Oswego High School and student representative on the school board, said her classmates have questions, including how they will receive important messages from coaches and parents during the school day, how the school plans to monitor secret cellphone use in the restrooms and what will replace cellphone cameras in classes like physics, where students often take videos of experiments to practice concepts like acceleration, speed and tempo.

But school board members said the current policy has not worked and it is time for a change.

“This will happen at the state level next spring,” said school board member Kirsten Aird. “I’m hearing more about it every day. We’re just in the early stages of this, but next year it will be for everyone in the state.”

— Julia Silverman covers education for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach her via email at [email protected] or follow her on x.com at @jrlsilverman.