Most schools in Pennsylvania have passed on 'somewhat controversial' cell phone pouch program

When his school board raised the prospect of banning cell phones, Superintendent Dan Taormina sunk in his seat.

"I did not want to take on kids and parents and their phones," said Taormina, who leads the Montoursville Area School District in Lycoming County. The district had previously tried banning phones — both by asking students to put them away, and hanging pouches with slots on classroom doors where kids could deposit them — with limited success.

But this year, Pennsylvania offered schools money to buy pouches that lock phones away for the whole school day. Montoursville applied for a grant, and in January, started requiring students in grades 5-12 to lock their phones in pouches.

It worked. "Day one, we noticed changes" — from better student participation in class, to teachers not having to repeat instructions, Taormina said. "They have their intended effect."

As parents voice growing concern about kids' attachment to cell phones — and teachers express frustration about classroom distractions — states have increasingly been moving to restrict phones in schools. In New York, for example, Gov. Kathy Hochul is pushing to reduce phone use statewide. Pennsylvania has responded not by banning phones, but offering schools grant money to do so under a new pilot program.

Yet Montoursville is an outlier. Of 779 public school entities that applied for $100 million in available funding through the School Safety and Mental Health grant program this year — including 500 school districts, 176 charter schools, 29 intermediate units, and 74 career and technical schools — only 18 requested to use the money for phone pouches, according to the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency.

A PCCD spokesperson, Alison Gantz, said the agency could not list the schools that sought funding for the pouches, because it does not disclose information about school safety grants "out of an abundance of caution."

But she provided names of several schools that had said they were willing to publicly comment. Among them was a charter school in Philadelphia, where an administrator then declined to talk to a reporter, saying the pouches were "somewhat controversial."

Many school leaders have been reluctant to fully ban phones, saying it's unrealistic to expect them to enforce the use of lockable bags — particularly in big schools, where monitoring student compliance could take extra time and staff. Others note parents' desire to be able to reach their children, and more broadly, the idea that kids need to learn to manage technology, not avoid it.

Some officials and students also note that students have been able to circumvent locked pouches by breaking them open or by putting an old phone in and continuing to use their current phone during the day.

In the Ridley School District in Delaware County, school administrators are trying to curb cell phone use by asking students to place phones in hanging shoe-holders on classroom doors or leave them in their lockers.

"Being able to pouch every phone as it comes in the door — it is not as easy as it might seem," said Ridley's superintendent, Lee Ann Wentzel. She noted that the district's high school has 1,900 students and its middle school, 1,300. Even with money offered by the state to buy the pouches, Wentzel said implementation was "really not cost-effective."

Wentzel said high school students are allowed to use their phones at lunch if they want, and that discipline referrals are down since the district adopted the no-phones-during-class rule this year. She's satisfied with the results, and added that she doesn't know of any schools that have opted for the state money for pouches.

State Sen. David Argall, a Republican who cosponsored the bill that created the pouch pilot program, said the program was intended as a "middle ground," rather than a full ban on phones in schools.

Lawmakers may try to pass a ban in the future, Argall said, but "it will depend on the results of the school districts that are now moving ahead" with the pilot program.

In Montoursville, the district received a $42,000 grant that covered the purchase cost, plus stations to unlock the pouches and training from Yondr, the manufacturer. Taormina said if he had to make the choice again to buy pouches, he would. It hasn't been difficult to implement, he said; students in grades 5 through 12 are expected to put their phones in pouches when they walk into school, and are responsible for maintaining the pouches throughout the day.

"Is it 100% foolproof? I'm sure not," Taormina said, noting "there have been occasions where we've opened a pouch and found a calculator and not a phone." But "it's very noticeable now" if a student has a phone, in violation of the policy: "There's no hiding."

Students unlock their pouches at stations near school exits at the end of the day; there's also a station outside the building, in case someone forgets to unlock their pouch inside.

While there have been "some upset parents," for the most part, the new policy was well received, Taormina said. He acknowledged that his district's schools are smaller than many others, with about 620 kids at the high school, and 580 at the middle school. But with "careful planning," he thinks bigger districts could implement the same program.

"After reading research and implementing this, there's no way we'd go back," Taormina said. "We have a responsibility to provide an environment without these distractions."