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State representatives brief Timberlane board on new cell‑phone and parental‑rights laws; policy committee to vet district rules
Summary
State representatives Deborah DeSimone and Jay Markell told the Timberlane Regional School District school board that Senate Bill 206 — restricting classroom cell‑phone use with stated exceptions — was signed into law June 27 and that a parental‑rights statute took effect July 1, and they offered help as the district updates policy.
State representatives Deborah DeSimone and Jay Markell addressed the Timberlane Regional School District school board during the public comment period to summarize two recently enacted state laws and to offer assistance as the district updates policy.
DeSimone and Markell said Senate Bill 206, which they described as prohibiting cell‑phone use “in the classroom,” was passed and signed into law on June 27 and will impose new requirements on local districts. “The legislature…works really hard to make sure that the exceptions would be, that students would be allowed if they have IEPs or 504 plans,” DeSimone said, adding that emergent multilingual students and students with documented needs should be exempted where device use is reasonably related to learning.
Markell said the bill “gives you the flexibility to be able to put things together” and offered to provide drafting advice to administrators on policy language and implementation. He told the board, “If anybody has any questions about how they would like to implement policy…please feel free to contact me. I’ll be happy to provide what advice I can.”
The representatives stressed timing: DeSimone noted the law’s implementation schedule and said the board and district should avoid surprising families close to the start of the school year. During later discussion, Superintendent Sandy (first name used in the meeting) told the board the policy committee had already received a model policy from the New Hampshire School Boards Association and would review it administratively and bring recommendations to the board’s next meeting.
Aside from SB206, the representatives summarized a parental‑rights law that they said codifies parents’ existing rights and took effect July 1. DeSimone and Markell said they had helped rewrite the measure to narrow burdens on school staff and to preserve parental input; Markell described the bill as intended to “respect the ability of educators to be able to properly educate” while protecting parents’ rights.
What the board will do next: the district’s policy committee will review the sample policy and administrative teams are preparing handbook and implementation details; the superintendent said administrators are already working on the handbook language and implementation steps so the district is aligned with the statute even before a formal policy vote.
The board did not take any formal votes on policy at the meeting; the comments from DeSimone and Markell were presented during the public comment/delegate portion and as informational briefings.
Representative quotes used in this article come from public comments in the meeting record.
