Parents in Philly-area districts want to ban cell phones in schools. But administrators are hesitant.

As students return to Garnet Valley High School this week, English teacher Deb Knox will make her now-standard announcement: Students are not to use their cell phones in class.

Still, she expects to spot the inevitable signs that the rule isn’t being followed: eyes cast downward, thumbs typing at lap-level.

Knox, who is entering her 26th year teaching, said her students are “respectful kids.” But she can’t compete with the lure of smartphones and teens’ desire to check text messages and social media.

The way social media apps are designed to capture attention, “they can’t possibly not look at it,” Knox said.

For years, teachers such as Knox have been battling the distractions caused by cell phones. But this year, momentum is building in Pennsylvania to scale back students’ tech consumption in an environment saturated by screens — whether through all-out bans of cell phones or requirements that students forfeit them during class, to restrictions on Chromebooks and even smartwatches.

Propelled by plans to ban phones in big-city districts such as New York and Los Angeles, and an influential book released in March, The Anxious Generation, which argues that a shift to a “phone-based childhood” is underlying a rise in mental illness among young people, some Philadelphia-area districts are trying new ways to control the constant distraction that phones can bring — with parent groups, including in communities like Unionville-Chadds Ford, Wallingford-Swarthmore, and West Chester, often at the forefront of pushes for new limits.

Politicians are heeding the call: This summer, Pennsylvania passed a law allowing school districts to tap into $100 million in grant funding to buy lockable cell phone pouches, if they commit to banning cell phones during the school day. It’s one of at least 11 states that has moved to curb the use of phones in schools.

“I do get the sense there’s a real movement — not just in Pennsylvania, but across the country, Republican governors, Democratic governors,” said State Sen. Ryan Aument (R., Lancaster), the new law’s sponsor. “This is sort of organically taking off.”

But in many area communities, parents, teachers and administrators are still battling over what role schools should play to focus kids’ attention in a society where phones are hard-wired into daily life.

Parents in the rising movement to restrict phones say they know schools aren’t to blame for their ubiquity, or the addictive nature of social media. But, they say, schools have to lead the way.

“I feel like the more that we give kids space away from phones, the less they are imperative to social relevance,” said Jen Panaro, a parent in the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District. “The school is the single, greatest place where all of the kids in the community are together, and they can have the greatest impact in leading a cultural change to reduce the omnipresence of cell phones and social media in our children’s lives.”

Panaro and her husband had tried to hold out on giving her son a cell phone, but when he entered sixth grade last year, “that’s sort of social suicide,” she said. They initially gave him a phone with no internet, but halfway through the year switched to an iPhone — in part because he couldn’t use apps used by his school for single sign-on purposes.

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While Panaro still places limits on her son — he doesn’t have social media — she’s worried about how phones may occupy an increasing space in his life. Earlier this year, she and other Unionville-Chadds Ford parents advocating for phone-free schools met with five of the district’s six principals; in June, they presented to their school board. (A district spokesperson said it plans to “study the impact of cell phones in our classrooms and, if appropriate, make recommendations for changes.”)

In Haverford Township, Dario Mescia plans to wait to give his oldest daughter a phone, but relented and bought her a smartwatch last year, when she was in fourth grade. “All her friends had them,” he said. “She started feeling a bit like an outcast.”

Mescia has since heard from his daughter’s teachers that even the watches are a distraction; he’s also concerned that devices are interfering with social development — noting “device Fridays” at middle school lunch, where kids can “just stare at their phones” instead of talking to each other.

Mescia, who’s worried about anxiety associated with social media and phone use, started a petition in June to remove cell phones from Haverford schools. He’s frustrated that the district hasn’t moved to adopt stricter measures — leaving it to high school teachers, for instance, to decide whether to require that students store their phones in a designated area during class.

Although Mescia says most parents he’s talked to are on board with the idea of restrictions, many are pessimistic that changes will actually be made — just based on “how prevalent phones are.”

A father of a 13- and an 11-year-old navigating their own technology use, Aument said he was motivated to introduce legislation after hearing from teachers that cell phones are “the number-one classroom management issue they have.”

Many teachers are hesitant to take phones from students, fearing they’ll be held liable for them, said Aument, who thought that a public policy solution was needed. While he initially considered a more “heavy-handed” proposal to ban phones outright, “my sense was ... there was not yet a real consensus in the education community around this.”

Even the pouches, however, may be a tough sell. State officials say it’s too soon to know how many districts will seek grants to buy cell phone pouches; the application window opened Aug. 8.

Numerous leaders of local school districts said they were not interested in the pouches. “In my professional opinion, I think that’s a ridiculous idea,” said Jim Crisfield, the superintendent of the Wissahickon School District. “Kids walk into the school with their cell phones — who is going to supervise and ensure that everyone puts their cell phone in a pouch?”

Wissahickon high school students are already required to put their phones in cell phone “hotels” hanging on classroom doors or walls when they enter; they retrieve them when they leave and can use them in hallways and at lunch.

“If the problem we’re trying to solve is reduced distractions during class time, I think we in Wissahickon are making great headway with that,” Crisfield said. “If the problem we’re trying to solve is addiction to social media, we’re not solving that with policies in a school setting.” He called the debate “another example of how society is, in a sense, punting to schools to find a solution.”

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In Norristown, where the district also isn’t opting for the pouches, Superintendent Christopher Dormer noted how integral phones have become to school procedures: To go to the restroom, for instance, Norristown students use an electronic hall pass app that monitors how long they are absent from class. Dormer also worried about kids’ ability to call 911 in the event of emergencies.

Mastery Schools, a charter network with 24 schools in Philadelphia and Camden, doesn’t allow students in elementary and middle schools to use phones at all during the day; those in high school can’t use them during classes, but often are permitted to take them out during lunch periods.

Still, Mastery does not collect phones or require students to lock them. “We know they have phones,” said Saliyah Cruz, Mastery’s chief equity officer. “I’m not sure it’s a good use of people’s energy to ban cell phones in 2024.”

During Rowan Arthur’s four years at Philadelphia High School for Girls, where she enters senior year Monday, phone policies have shifted: from an honor system relying on students to keep their phones stowed, to requirements that phones be placed in lockable Yondr pouches — a rule that was abandoned last year but is now returning.

Arthur is disappointed — not because she wants to use her phone; with a roster full of college-level classes, she doesn’t have time to scroll Instagram. But to her, requiring students to lock their phones feels like “overpolicing,” she said.

Plus, in Arthur’s 10th-grade year, the pouches were pointless a few months into the school year, she said; social media is full of hacks on how to defeat them. “You would walk into school and hear the Yondr pouches banging on the ledge of the bathroom,” Arthur said.

Others say they believe schools’ focus should be on teaching children how to live in an increasingly online world — rather than cutting them off from it.

“We need to start educating kids: These social media companies are manipulating you,” said Marc Bertrando, the Garnet Valley superintendent. “Once teenagers know somebody’s trying to trick them, things change quickly.”

Bertrando acknowledged that schools are increasingly challenged by students’ use of phones and social media; students at Garnet Valley have created fake accounts for teachers, similar to the Malvern middle schoolers who garnered national attention for demeaning TikTok impersonations of their teachers.

A district committee of teachers, administrators, parents and students will attempt to tackle those problems this year, reading the Anxious Generation and forming a plan for “developing digitally disciplined students,” Bertrando said — including a unified approach to cell phones.

But he doesn’t think limiting access to technology will end its misuse. “How are you going to teach a child to be independent, self-directed, disciplined, and able to discern what’s real, what’s biased — all those skills we use as adults?” said Bertrando.

While the Upper Darby School District is enacting a new policy restricting phones this year — K-8 students won’t be allowed to use phones at any point during the day, while high schoolers won’t be allowed during classes — the district won’t be locking or taking students’ phones. Instead, it’s framing the new rule as a lesson; since July, the district has been asking students to practice not using their phones for an increasing amount of time each week.

“We’re trying to teach social responsibility,” said Superintendent Daniel McGarry.