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Palm Beach school officials outline state bills affecting start times, safety and phones
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Summary
District staff summarized key 2025 Florida bills affecting Palm Beach County schools: a school start-time waiver, clarified gate-locking requirements, a K—8 cell-phone restriction, updated standards and volunteer-screening rules, and new athlete-health requirements.
Palm Beach County School District officials briefed the Village of Royal Palm Beach Education Advisory Board on a package of 2025 state laws and clarifications that will affect local schools.
"There were 1,900 bills that were filed this legislative session," said Yolanda Morgan, chief of staff for the school district, explaining that roughly 257 bills were enrolled and that about 35 had specific district impacts. Morgan summarized several measures that the district is implementing or preparing to implement.
Morgan said the state provided a waiver to allow flexibility on school start times this year and credited Representative Anne Gerwig for championing the change that lets districts apply for exceptions. On campus security, Morgan described SB1470 as clarifying when gates and doors must be locked: generally 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after the school day, while allowing single-point entry configurations and zoned access depending on campus layout.
A broad education —train' bill (HB1105) includes a K—8 cell-phone restriction that the district is aligning with proposed board policy 5.183. Under the policy and law, kindergarten through eighth-grade students are not permitted to have cell phones on campus; high school students may use phones only for teacher-authorized instructional purposes. HB1105 also expands district authority related to school buses and trespass on buses.
Morgan also summarized HB1255, which updated academic standards and reading-intervention approaches and authorized the use of CLT scores at state universities in certain admissions processes; she said child-study team communications and discipline procedures also changed. Other bills mentioned included measures on interscholastic participation for home-education and private-school students (SB248), Holocaust remembrance instruction (SB356), volunteer screening and personnel arrest-reporting requirements (SB1374), and health measures including anaphylaxis training and a forthcoming ECG requirement for participating high-school athletes (SB1514).
District staff said they will continue aligning board policies and district procedures with the new statutory requirements and that the school board will consider its legislative priorities at an upcoming workshop and vote in October.
No formal board votes on these items were taken at the village session; Morgan's presentation was an informational update for the advisory board and public.
