No major hitches on Day 1 without cellphones in L.A. Unified schools

A cellphone ban — covering some 800 schools — took effect Tuesday in the Los Angeles Unified School District, eliciting a mix of reactions but no reports of major problems.

“I think it’s a good thing for everyone’s education,” said Kaya Tejano, an 11-year-old 6th-grader at Walter Reed Middle School in Studio City. “They should be more focused for learning and lessons than on their phones.”

Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school system, was not the first to take this step, but it was toward the leading edge of what has become a bipartisan and even international avalanche.

The cellphone ban also applies to smart watches and any device that can send messages, receive calls or scroll the internet. Phones can be used on buses to school but are not allowed during lunch or breaks. Each campus decided whether to use an honor system or, if not, how the devices would be stored or locked up.

The consequences for violations are not clearly spelled out, but the ban is broader and took effect sooner than the deadline under the California Phone-Free Schools Act. Under that law, the state’s 1,000 school districts, charter schools and county education offices must draft student cellphone policies by July 1, 2026 — and administrators can opt for limiting rather than outright banning cellphone use, as in L.A. Unified.

As of Tuesday afternoon, L.A. school board President Scott Schmerelson said he’d received only four recent emails expressing concerns — suggesting to him that most parents were coming around, even though some had concerns.

“They understand — students shouldn’t have their phones on,” Schmerelson said. “They shouldn’t be interrupting the lessons of the teachers, but they’re worried about safety. They always mention school shootings. They always mention lockdowns. They always mention emergency situations. That’s what bothers them.”

As of midday Tuesday, Maria Nichols, head of the union that represents principals, said she’d heard no complaints related to the new rules from her membership.

All schools were ready by Tuesday, said L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho, to manage a ban that had been pushed back to the second semester and then a few weeks beyond to get things set up.

Leading into the weekend, some 70 campuses already were observing a ban — some started in recent weeks; some have been in place for several years.

In an interview, Carvalho said students will say to him: “‘I initially did not like the idea. It was sort of difficult for me, but now, you know, a couple weeks in’ — for the schools that had already begun an implementation — ‘I’m OK with it. I feel I can concentrate more and actually get to play more.’”

He added: “The teachers I’ve spoken with are giving it high marks, because they feel that the distraction level in school is going to be reduced.”

That’s what Kaya observed, more or less.

Before the ban, “during nutrition or lunchtime people would walk around with their phones, and some people would be on them during class time,” Kaya said. Some people on Tuesday were talking in class perhaps a little too much without their phones to keep them quiet, she said.

Not everyone was going along. As Kaya entered Walter Reed, she walked past two adults yelling at the principal and exhorting students: “Do you feel safe? You shouldn’t give your phones to these people.”

At least one student rebelled, leading to the confiscation of a phone during physical education, reported an 8th-grader at Walter Reed, who asked not to be named. Before the ban, he said, he’d noticed his classmates were using their phones more and more during school as they got older. He did, too, but only when teachers allowed it after classwork was finished.

That wasn’t an option Tuesday. One student brought in a deck of cards instead.

A few students tried to break open the magnetic pouches that held their phones, Reed students reported. And a few students purportedly lied — falsely claiming they didn’t have a phone — but the vast majority complied.

Kaya’s mother, Jessica Kelly, serves as president of Friends of Reed, a school support group. Most parents she knows support the ban.

“As a volunteer who is on a middle school campus two to three times per week, it’s a serious issue,” Kelly said. “Kids are walking to classes and bumping into people because they are so mesmerized by their phones.

“Phones are ringing/buzzing, disrupting class time,” she said. “Some kids have the most inappropriate ringtones, too. Kids play games on their watches instead of learning. Kids doom-scrolling during lunch, not socializing with their peers. This addiction is real.”

She added: “Honestly, the parents are just as bad. So many parents are texting/calling their kids during the day. Can a parent not go six hours without talking to their child?”

But Meghan Gohil, parent of a 9th-grader at Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, said the district is curtailing a learning tool.

In music class, her son used his phone “to record himself, listen to songs, and also as a metronome,” she said. In science class, students documented experiment results with pictures. For note-taking, students took pictures of slides. Her son “has been negatively impacted by the cellphone ban,” she said.

About 800 schools are covered by the ban; adult education and early education are exempt. About half of schools chose to use the honor system. Phones are simply expected to be turned off and put away. Half of the rest are using magnetic pouches, in which students lock their phones upon arrival to campus, Carvalho said. The other half use another system — such as putting phones in lockers or a bin.

For Faith Perron, the success of the day was that she had been allowed to keep her cellphone without a hassle. Faith, also a sixth-grader at Reed, has a hearing aid and cochlear implants. She has a medical exemption because she can’t hear announcements and also would have trouble understanding instructions in a noisy or chaotic situation, such as a school emergency.

Her phone has an audio transcriber, and she also can use it to adjust her hearing devices.

Carvalho noted that some students monitor medical conditions with their phones. Some students who are learning English use their phones for translation.

Based on the experience of early adopters, Carvalho said, there’s a transition period that lasts “about a couple weeks where they have to remind kids constantly, and then it becomes one more learned behavior. Where you do it for 20 to 21 days in a row, it becomes part of your norm. And I think we’ll see that.”