FUSD adopts California’s Phone Ban Bill AB 3216 for the 2027 school year, garnering various reactions from MSJ school communities

By Web Editor Scarlett Huang, Opinion Editor Warren Su, and Staff Writers Saesha Prabhakar and Hamnah Akhtar

Introduction

When MSJ students returned to school this 2026-27 school year, they found themselves unable to use their phones, personal laptops, or even headphones in the classroom. These changes are a result of smartphone restrictions presented in CA’s new Phone-Free Schools Act. The statewide policy requires districts across CA to create new policies to limit smartphone usage by July 1 and update them every five years. The Act, passed unanimously in 2024, addressed concerns about phone use leading to lower academic performance, mental health issues, and bullying.

The Phone-Free Schools Act does not mention personal devices other than smartphones. However,  FUSD extends the phone policy by including other “mobile communication devices.” At MSJ, that means students cannot use their own devices during class, unless given express permission by a teacher. The restriction also prevents the use of personal laptops for extracurriculars and school assignments, as well as phones during Read and passing periods. At times, this can prove disruptive to student schedules. “As an athlete, it’s important for me to get work done at school … with the new ban it’s harder for me to manage my time,” Sophomore Dylan Huang said.

Statewide Interpretations

CA is only the latest in a sweeping series of statewide phone bans, with Ballotpedia reporting at least 36 states banning phones as of August. Parents have expressed safety concerns about the bans, wanting to be able to contact their children in the case of an emergency. “I think parents just have a general fear of what’s happening with their kids during the day,” Shannon Moser, a parent from Rochester, New York, said to PBS. The MSJ phone policy specifically lists an exception for phone use during emergencies. New data on the phone bans has also contradicted beliefs of significant academic improvement: a recent study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which looked at roughly 40,000 schools from between January 2019 to January 2026, demonstrated that the effects of the phone bans were not as immediate, nor as effective as expected. Students’ test scores did not dramatically improve — with the “average effects … consistently close to zero” — and suspension and disciplinary incident rates increased by 16%. In response to these findings, some teachers have reiterated the more qualitative benefits of the phone bans. “Honestly, it’s demoralizing to look out at a classroom of kids scrolling on their phones,” Brown University Economics Professor Emily Oster wrote in The New York Times. 

Across the state, schools have taken different approaches to the new policy. Oakland Unified School District uses lockboxes and Yondr pouches, which are magnetic fabric bags used to keep phones sealed during the day, while San Francisco Unified School District shifted to an honor system after finding Yondr pouches difficult to manage. The Los Angeles Unified School District has also restricted phone use during instructional hours, having teachers enforce a screen time limit of one hour per week in each course. 

Impact on MSJ

While the ban has led to fundamental changes in some MSJ classes, for those that require personal device use, the ban gives teachers and schools some power in carving out exceptions. For example, Digital Imaging uses photo passes: similar to hall passes, they function as permission from both teachers and administrators to use phones across campus during instructional time for the class. Both Yearbook and Journalism allow exceptions for required software, such as the Adobe Creative Suite and video-editing apps, that are not accessible on Chromebooks. Some exceptions were carved out prior to the school year, while others are still being discussed with school administration.

Although students have expressed frustration toward the new policy, some understand the reasoning behind the policy. “[Other representatives and I] mostly agree on the phone ban. It does make sense to ban them during instructional time … we’re at school to learn,” MSJ SURFBoardE Representative Sai Aditya Koorapati said. 

Some teachers have long felt that the phone bans were necessary. “It felt as a teacher like it was whack-a-mole — where you’re [telling] one student, ‘put your phone away,’ and the next student, ‘put your phone away,’” MVROP Photography Instructor Michelle Boire said. Other teachers also expressed their frustrations with electronic device use in school. “I think … 90% of students are abusing the tech privileges that we’ve given them here at school … so it’s disappointing for some, but I think it’ll be best for looking at everyone as a whole,” Social Studies Teacher Matthew Bullington said

Teachers have also highlighted improvements in person-to-person social interaction as a potential benefit of the ban. “Already I’m starting to see socialization improve on our campus,” Bullington said. “I feel like after [the coronavirus pandemic], we had a lot of social awkwardness [among] our youth.” The transition was not without hurdles, as teachers also noted some of the challenges they faced adapting. “I also feel like it’s challenged me too as a teacher because now I can’t use some of the tools that I was using before,” Boire said.