At Granger High School, students place their cell phones in magnetic bags at the beginning of the school day, where they remain until the end of the school day. Then, students place their bags over a magnet held by a member of school staff, which unlocks the lock and allows students to use their phones again. Most students store the bags in their backpacks.

In this way, Granger High School has chosen to comply with the Granite School District’s new policy on cell phone use, which went into effect at the beginning of the school year. The policy states that cell phones are prohibited during class time.

Tyler Howe, principal of Granger High School, said implementation of the policy, which was developed by the school community over 15 months, is an “ongoing process.”

He noticed that their school had become quite noisy at lunchtime because the students were chatting with each other, whereas before many had their heads buried in their cell phones.

“It started with teachers coming to me and saying we need to be more proactive and intentional about how we address the problem and create time for learning,” he said.

“We are on the ninth day of the school year and have seen big changes at our school. Teachers have told me they have never packed so much material into a class period. They are ahead of schedule because there are simply not as many distractions,” Howe said during a press conference on Monday.

Senator Lincoln Fillmore (R-South Jordan) praised local efforts to restrict cell phone use. “Granger is a leader in the state in implementing a cell phone policy that prioritizes the learning environment and student mental health,” he said.

Because state laws do not currently address the issue of cell phones, schools or districts have established their own policies.

Fillmore and Republican Rep. Doug Welton of Payson, an educator, are proposing a statewide ban on cellphone use in schools unless a school district or charter school board passes a policy allowing their use.

The bill would “turn the way we approach cell phones in schools on its head,” Fillmore said.

“So we maintain local control, but we recognize that in the time since cell phones, and particularly smartphones, have become ubiquitous in schools, we have learned so much about their impact on students and their impact on the learning process that we need to reset and ban cell phones in schools except under specific circumstances that teachers, school boards, school districts, students and parents can jointly determine,” Fillmore said.

The bill would provide a one-time allocation of $4.8 million from the Public Education Economic Stabilization Account to provide grants to schools for equipment to implement policies prohibiting cell phone use during class time, such as lockable magnetic bags.

The Policy Project, a nonprofit that promotes solutions-based policy, is working with the Utah Legislature to support the effort through private fundraising to help schools purchase the necessary technology or equipment to implement the state law, said the organization’s founder and president, Emily Bell McCormick.

“In addition, we will support teachers and school administrators by creating best practices, models and implementation guidelines that will save our busy schools time and effort and take the guesswork out of how best to implement this change,” she said.

Sydnee Dickson, the state’s education minister, said she had observed extensive mobile phone use in classrooms and was therefore initially skeptical about initial discussions about a blanket ban on mobile phones in schools.

But as she dug deeper into the data and learned more about the increase in mental health issues among students linked to the introduction of social media, as well as teachers’ frustration with students who focus more on what’s happening on social media than what’s happening in the classroom, behavioral problems, and lack of engagement, she changed her mind.

“I’m a convert. … Our students deserve to be in places where there are no distractions,” she said.

Granger High School senior Cameron Black said implementation of the policy has had mixed results, with some students trying to open their cell phone cases by banging them against the wall or bringing magnets to school to try to open the locks.

Black said he has also observed that students are more social and learn more easily because there are fewer distractions in class.

“Before last school year, everyone was on their phones. I think this year our cafeteria was louder than ever before. I mean, I’m all for it,” he said.