The Broward County School Board this year joined the state in banning certain electronic devices, including cell phones, in the classroom to boost mental health and better academic performance.
A survey of thousands of students and parents released this week by the school board found a significant number among both groups not entirely happy with the new policy. And board members appeared open to changes — albeit after further study on its impact.
The original bill, CS/HB 379, Technology in K-12 Public Schools, passed in spring of 2023. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law on May 9, 2023, and it went into effect on July 1, 2023. It allows students to have their devices on them in school, but orders teachers and staff to ban their use during instructional time.
"We are giving teachers the authority to establish classroom rules on cell phone use," DeSantis posted on X after signing the bill into law. "Our students need to be focused on learning — not social media."
Broward Schools voted to ban devices this past summer. The ban includes the classroom, hallways and during lunch.
Per state law, teachers can set aside an area for devices during instructional time and allow students to use their devices for educational purposes only. Broward Schools allows for exceptions to the ban when authorized by a teacher.
After a two-week grace period at the beginning of this school year, administrators began enforcing the ban full-force at the end of August.
Students who use any of the devices on the ban list could be subject to disciplinary action — most of those so far have been meetings with parents, verbal warnings and some confiscations.
Banned devices include cell phones, tablets, laptops, headphones, earbuds, AirPods, smartwatches and can expand out to any device that has internet access.
In a few cases of repeated violations, students faced both in-school and regular suspensions.
Middle and high schoolers saw a huge uptick in cell phone violations for this academic year compared to violations in 2023 and 2024.
During its workshop meeting on Wednesday, school board members discussed the ban's impact and how students, staff and parents were responding.
“Not surprisingly, based on what we've heard from our students, they were very dissatisfied with the implementation of the policy,” said Jodi Washington, task assigned executive director of Student Services Initiatives.
READ MORE: In Broward, some parents are pushing back against the school district's cellphone ban
In its survey of students, about half of the almost 27,000 who responded strongly disagreed with the restrictions.
In its survey of parents, a large majority of the nearly 40,000 parents who responded had positive reactions to the ban. About 13,600 parents either disagreed or strongly disagreed with policy.
However, the majority of parent responses show that their support for the ban ends with the lunchtime restriction. Many disagree with the ban outside of the classroom.
Board members said more time is needed to assess if the ban will boost mental health or academic performance.
“We cannot necessarily say restricting use during lunchtime supports or not supports mental health,” said board member Dr. Jeff Holness.
Several board members, including superintendent Dr. Howard Hepburn, want to see more data over a longer period of time to make more conclusive recommendations about the ban.
“I think at the end of the school year once we've gone through an entire school year, once we started embedding some things in culture, once we start looking at correlative data … we can better answer that question,” said Hepburn in response to questions from Holness.
In terms of implementation of the ban, students were decisively dissatisfied with the results, while parents were largely neutral.
Using an AI summary of other parent and staff responses, the board identified repeated concerns with the ban.
Namely, emergencies like school shootings and medical problems raised red flags in allowing students to quickly call parents, along with day-to-day activities like coordinating pick ups from school.
Board member Dr. Allen Zeman recommended against making any immediate changes in the face of the survey, given the confusion it might cause mid-year and the time it would take to change policies.
“I'm happy to change this long term,” he said during the meeting. “I want to try it this year; I want to measure, measure, measure.”
“I want to make sure what we're doing really works and if it helps academics as the students and teachers and staff told us it should or would, if it improves mental health in any kind of tangible way.”
