Long Beach Unified students returned to school Monday for their spring semester, but under a new policy, classrooms will be free of cellphones.<\/p>\n
The district convened a working group of staff, educators, students, parents and caregivers in October 2024 to develop such a policy<\/a> in response to a California law<\/a> that requires schools to restrict student cellphone use by July 2026. <\/p>\n The district announced the policy in September, promising the rollout would begin this month.<\/p>\n How does the cellphone ban work?<\/p>\n Here are the basics:<\/p>\n The policy applies to smartwatches, headphones and gaming consoles.Students in transitional kindergarten (TK)<\/a> through eighth grade must turn off and store their devices when they arrive on campus until they leave, including before- and after-school programs.\u00a0High school students can use their devices during passing periods and at lunch.\u00a0Students can\u2019t use their phones in restrooms or on field trips.\u00a0<\/p>\n Keep up with LAist.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, you’ll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less. <\/p>\n There are exceptions. Students can use their phones:<\/p>\n In case of an emergency.With administrator permission.At the direction of their doctor.If they have a disability and using their device is part of an individualized education program (IEP).\u00a0<\/p>\n Each school is responsible for creating a plan to implement the district-wide policy and individual teachers may use lockers or other methods to store students’ phones.<\/p>\n The district\u2019s policy<\/a> prohibits specific types of cellphone and social media use, too:<\/p>\n Cyberbullying on or off campus.\u00a0Recording or photographing fights, criminal behavior or another person without their permission. \u201cWe’ve had major problems with kids filming inappropriate things in the bathroom, with things like fights,\u201d said Chris Itson, a program administrator in the district\u2019s communications department, during a July 16 board meeting. \u201cIt’s a motivator because it’s \u2018Now I can get attention by doing this online.\u2019\u201dImpersonating another person online. For example, creating a fake social media profile or posts that falsely represent another student.\u00a0<\/p>\n The policy also cites research that shows young people interact less often in-person<\/a> than previous generations and that social media use can be linked to negative mental health outcomes<\/a>, including anxiety and depression.<\/p>\n What we know about bans in other districts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long Beach Unified students returned to school Monday for their spring semester, but under a new policy, classrooms…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[74490,131,133,132,49733,74491],"class_list":["post-150372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-lbusd","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-long-beach-unified-school-district","tag-school-cellphone-bans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}