Santa Cruz County districts get tough on cellphones in class as new school year begins

Thousands of Santa Cruz County public school students were set to arrive in classrooms on the first day of school Thursday to requests for their smartphones to be turned off and stowed in classroom caddies, or kept tucked away in backpacks, as local school districts enforce some of their strictest cellphone policies to date.

While many teachers and some schools already had their own policies, one Santa Cruz City Schools teacher says a new state law that requires school districts to have rules prohibiting or restricting cellphone use in schools by July 2026 will bring consistency in enforcement to districts. 

In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the “Phone-Free Schools Act” requiring districts to establish rules for cellphone use at their schools. Districts like Santa Cruz City Schools and San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District have announced new policies to address the use of the devices. School officials say excessive use of smartphones and social media have been shown to cause mental health challenges.

Matt Bruner, co-president of the Santa Cruz City Schools teachers union, said teachers are fully in support of the district’s implementation of the policy. He thinks it will help to reduce distractions for students and improve learning, as well as reinforce the rules since now they will be districtwide. Students won’t have some teachers allowing phones and others restricting them.  

“Cellphones represent a distraction,” he said. “It is fundamentally impossible for teachers to be more interesting than all the things happening on teenagers’ and kids’ cellphones.”

Santa Cruz City Schools’ policy has separate rules for its middle schools and high schools. The district’s middle schools restrict cellphones during school hours, while high schools require students to leave their phones in a “caddy” or container for the duration of a class. 

The policy also describes the consequences of when students violate policy – which range from being required to turn in their phone for the entire day to the district office, to asking a parent to retrieve the phone after it was confiscated, to having to turn in their phone to the school’s office during school hours for the remainder of the academic year. 

“We just haven’t had that level of explicit and hard and fast rule,” said Bruner, referring to the prohibition of cellphone use. 

He’s been teaching at Soquel High School for 12 years and has required students to put their phone in a container at the start of class for about nine years. Bruner teaches Advanced Placement U.S. government and politics to seniors and honors world history to sophomores. He said when teachers like him initially restricted phones years ago, students often complained, but they’re more used to it now.

The difference between a student having their phone during class compared to when they don’t have it with them is “night and day” in terms of their attention and engagement, he said. 

Bruner said having districtwide rules emphasizes the “seriousness of solving this problem” for all students and families. 

SLVUSD introduced an updated policy this year requiring that high school students turn their phones off and put them in a container during instructional time. For TK-8 students, the policy requires that all electronic devices must be turned off and kept in a student’s backpack during school hours – even during lunch and breaks. If a student uses an electronic device during school hours without permission, a district employee will confiscate the device until a guardian retrieves it at the end of the school day. 

SLVUSD Superintendent Chris Schiermeyer described the district’s new policy in a back-to-school letter to families last week. 

“We ask all families to support this new legal requirement and our staff by reviewing our updated policy and helping ensure your child(ren) understands and follows these guidelines,” he wrote in the letter. “Together, we can support their focus on academics, healthy social development, and the meaningful, positive interactions happening around them every day.”

Like some districts, Live Oak already had a districtwide policy for its three elementary schools and middle school. Adopted in 2023, the policy prohibits all of the district’s students from using a “cellphone, smart watch, pager or other mobile communication device” during instructional time.

A Pew Research Center survey found that 46% of teens reported that they were online “almost constantly.” Smartphones provide users with endless options for browsing the internet, playing games, posting on social media, watching videos and messaging. 

While districts are working to limit some technology, they’re also focused on how they can safely teach new ones like artificial intelligence. In an effort to prepare students for how AI is rapidly changing how people learn and work, districts are implementing new programs to teach them the technology. 

Scotts Valley Unified Superintendent Tanya Krause announced that starting this year, the district’s fourth through 12th grade students will be using an AI platform called MagicSchool AI. 

“With tools like ChatGPT and others being used in the professional world, it’s important that students learn how to use the technology safely,” she wrote in a letter to families. “By using MagicSchool in our classes, your student will be prepared for the future of technology in the workforce.”

She said students can use MagicSchool, with supervision from their teachers, to get questions answered, get real-time feedback on their writing and generate images, among other tools. 

Krause added that the program doesn’t collect any student data. 

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