Beacon City School District previews steps to implement new state ban on student internet-enabled devices

Beacon City School District Superintendent Matt Levine said the district will adopt a policy by Aug. 1 to comply with a newly enacted state law that bans student possession of internet-enabled personal devices "from bell to bell" on school grounds.

Levine said the law requires districts to adopt a policy and identify one or more storage options for devices, and to provide families with ways to contact students during the day through school staff. "This has been revised to align with new state law regarding Internet enabled personal devices, AKA mostly phones," he said.

The law's timing and details prompted the district to collect community feedback. Levine said the district received 278 survey responses roughly evenly split among students, staff and parents. He said students told district staff they felt they had complied with the previous policy and were surprised by the change; teachers asked for clear, consistent language and specific storage solutions; and parents expressed mixed views, with about 30–40% raising concerns about reaching their children during the day.

Levine described the district's draft approach: elementary students will keep devices stored in backpacks; middle- and high-school students will store devices in lockers at the start of the day. For instances when a student is found accessing a device during the school day, administrators will apply graduated consequences: first offense, the device is stored in a lockable administrator locker for the rest of the day; second offense, for five days; third offense, 10 days; repeated offenses can result in daily storage for the remainder of the year. Levine said the district bought small lockable lockers for administrator offices to handle first-day incidents.

The district considered a commercially marketed product (referred to by staff as Yonder). Levine said a preliminary estimate to outfit the two secondary schools with a Yonder-style system was about $72,000, and "probably more like $80,000" with additional required parts. By contrast, the state allocated $13,000 to the district this summer for implementation. "It's not even anywhere in the ballpark of doing that," Levine told the board.

Levine and staff discussed specific exemption pathways written into the law: individualized education programs (IEPs), Section 504 plans, caregiver status applications to principals, and translation services. "IEPs and 504s very well could be something that's needed, and we're gonna work that out for each individual child," Levine said. He added that caregiver status does not mean unlimited device use; approved students will still be required to keep devices stored and will get limited, scheduled access.

Administrators outlined steps to ease the student transition. Brian Soltis (middle school staff) said the district will teach students to use lockers at the start of the year, build practice time into early schedules, and consider modest schedule adjustments such as increasing hallway passing time from four to five minutes to reduce congestion. "We'll build that in where when they come into school, they'll have additional time, to get to the locker," Soltis said.

Staff also reported research and vendor outreach about ways families and students could communicate during the day. The district considered Remind and other third-party messaging tools but said technology vendors raised student-privacy and compliance concerns under student-privacy law (Ed. Law 2-d). High-school and middle-school staff said students will be permitted to use school phones or scheduled Chromebook access, with guidance and monitoring, for limited daytime contact with families.

Levine said the district plans a concentrated communications campaign throughout August with detailed contact pages for families (who to call for urgent pickup, email addresses and phone numbers, and how to apply for exemptions). He said he expects to refine the policy at the board level if adjustments are needed once the year begins.

Why it matters: The district must adopt a policy by Aug. 1 to comply with the state law. The board heard that the available state funds will cover only a fraction of the estimated cost of some storage solutions, and that the district will rely on lockers and other low-cost approaches while the community and staff adapt to a new day-to-day routine for students.

Levine and principals committed to monitoring implementation and bringing adjustments back to the board if needed. "We're probably gonna have to do that," Levine said, describing plans for an FAQ, student and parent communications, and further internal planning in August.