On Jan 1, VA Governor Glenn Youngkin’s cell phone ban in schools went into effect. This would prohibit students K-12 across Virginia from using their phones during school hours, including lunches and passing periods. The idea of the ban is to prevent students from getting distracted during class, but complaints from parents have been brought up. Many parents have been worried about not being able to communicate with their children in case of an emergency. The Virginia Department of Education has addressed these concerns back in September in the Guidance for Cell Phone-Free Education Pursuant to Executive Order 33 guidebook, “Parents should use school-based communication tools and channels to communicate emergencies during bell-to-bell instructional time.” This means parents would be contacting the school first and then the school would inform their child of the emergency.

     While the ban has been effective for weeks now, there hasn’t been any extra reinforcement of it than what was already set in place. With no changes seemingly made from what the cell phone policy already was, most students don’t care about the ban. As of writing, there are around eight students using their phones in the classroom I’m in. Even if the ban does get more enforcement, students have consistently found loopholes and workarounds to just about every rule or ban schools have placed, whether it be playing blocked browser games on school computers or cheating on an assignment. There’s almost doubt that it’ll be the same on whatever measures the school makes to enforce the cell phone ban.