Students store their cellphones while attending class at Grant High School in Portland, Ore., Oct. 3, 2023. Board members in Portland Public Schools mandated cellphone restrictions across Oregon's largest school district on Jan. 7, 2025.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
The Portland Public Schools governing board voted Tuesday night to adopt a new, districtwide policy limiting students’ use of cellphones.
Under the new policy, all students in Oregon’s largest school district — regardless of grade — must turn off their phones, smartwatches and other personal electronic devices during school hours, including lunch periods.
The policy has some exceptions, particularly for students with disabilities who need personal devices to communicate or learn effectively. Cellphones can also be used for approved academic activities or programs.
The superintendent and school administrators will have some flexibility when implementing the policy at the school level. For instance, the board is not requiring the use of Yondr pouches seen in some PPS schools. Students who don’t follow the policy will be subject to the district’s standing discipline guidelines and could have their devices confiscated.
“We started this because teachers came to us, and they were so frustrated,” board member Patte Sullivan said. “There were teachers who were trying to keep… the cell phones out of the classroom. It wasn’t working; everything they did wasn’t working.
“And they said, ‘Please, make a policy, so we can teach, so we don’t have to spend our whole time telling people to put away their cellphones.’ ”
The school board approved the policy Tuesday night on a 5-2 vote, with members Herman Greene and Gary Hollands voting in opposition. They both voted against the policy when it was amended last month to include lunch periods in the off-and-away restriction.
JJ Kunsevi, the student representative to the board and a McDaniel High School senior, used his symbolic vote Tuesday against the policy as well.
Banning cellphones in schools is a growing conversation nationally. According to EducationWeek’s tracker, updated last month, at least 19 states have passed laws or enacted policies that ban or restrict students’ use of cellphones in schools through either statewide or local actions.
The specific restrictions vary from state to state. Oregon is one of seven states where policies are recommended. Some of the most restrictive laws are in the South. Florida bars use of phones during instructional time. Louisiana prohibits use “during the instructional day.” South Carolina put in a condition that districts have to have a policy to receive state aid for their budget and is also “during the school day.”
Board members speak in favor of the policy
Toward the start of Tuesday’s discussion, Chair Eddie Wang stressed that this is “just a policy; it’s just a direction.” The policy, he said, doesn’t tell the district how to do something, and it’s up to each school to decide how they want to implement it.
Wang shared data and quotes from a recent North Clackamas School District presentation showing the impact of the district’s all-day cellphone ban that went into effect this fall. After nearly two months, the data showed a decrease in fights, disruptive conduct, harassment and substance abuse, Wang reported, as well as improved attendance. Students and teachers both reported more social interactions and better focus.
Though North Clackamas is a smaller, suburban district compared to Portland, Wang hopes to see the same positive effects in PPS.
“Teacher burnout is at an all-time high,” Wang added, speaking to national trends in recent years. “After COVID, there’s been an increased dependence on phone use and, you know, for good or bad, there’s been an impact in the classroom.”
Vice Chair Michelle DePass said the current system isn’t working, and she believes having the phones away all day, including lunch, will have multiple benefits.
When it comes to safety and security, she said, “The data from law enforcement is clear. These do not make you safer. In fact, in an emergency, you need to be hyper-focused on a trained adult in the room, not on the phone.”
She said the board can always change the policy back if it doesn’t work.
“As a responsible adult, I feel compelled to vote ‘yes’ for this because I think it will help,” DePass said. “I think it will help student outcomes, it’ll help socialization, and everybody will be fine without a phone for six hours. We can survive that.”
(Left to right) Members of the Portland Public Schools Board of Education Michelle DePass, Herman Greene, Gary Hollands and Julia Brim-Edwards, listen to testimony from a PPS student and parent, both expressing dismay over the proposed calendar for students to make up instruction days missed due to the strike. The testimony was during a special meeting where the board unanimously passed a contract with PAT, at the PPS district offices in Portland, Nov. 28, 2023.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
Maya Pueo von Geldern, a parent volunteer and a PPS substitute and SUN school teacher, said she supported the policy. She believes the district needs a “simple, clear rule [that] makes it easier to draw the line,” and that it shouldn’t be up to individual teachers to constantly battle students throughout the day.
“I know we’re raising students to be able to go out into the world and make adult decisions and that we are all, as adults, able to monitor our phone usage on our own,” she said. “But if I could go back and train myself to be able to disconnect from my phone for seven hours a day, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would do it faster than I could pick up my phone and swipe up to check for notifications.”
She hopes the district is setting up the next generation to be able to do so, but better than adults are. She described the addictive behaviors she’s seen in class.
“When I teach middle schoolers and SUN school and my students pull out their phones, I remind them they need to be off and away,” she said. “They put them in their pockets and apologize, but then within seconds, they pull them back out and swipe up to check notifications without even realizing they’re doing it.”
Pueo von Geldern’s comments were similar to board member Julia Brim-Edwards’ — they both agreed that students off campus should have access to their phones for emergencies and other needs.
Students push back during public comment; Armstrong weighs in
The school board has discussed the issue since last spring, and many community members have weighed in, including a handful of students and a parent-teacher at Tuesday’s meeting. Several people submitted comments last month to be considered in the night’s decision.
Ian Ritorto, a district student council representative at Roosevelt High School, said they agreed an off-and-away policy during class time is the most effective way to handle phones. They also said phones can be a helpful learning tool and should be up to the discretion of the teacher. Ritorto gave the example of a leadership class, where students use their phones to post TikTok film clips for their announcements and other assignments.
But enforcing a ban all day, they argued, is ineffective, an expensive and unnecessary use of resources, and a hindrance to safety.
“Kids deserve the right to have their phones at the event of a school shooting, which are becoming frightfully common these days,” Ritorto said. “I’d like to tell my family I love them before I get shot. And I’m sorry if that’s not supported by some statistics in the police department, but I feel that very strongly in my heart.”
Cayley Linn, student at Franklin High School, said her friends at Cleveland and Grant high schoolers tell her the Yondr pouches are “overkill” and inconvenient, and many say they simply don’t use them. Some put old phones in the pouch as a diversion; some break the pouches to get into them. Linn said others lie and say they left their phones at home, adding that it’s a waste of money as a result. One of her friends has to go to the other side of the school building to get her pouch unlocked before going back to catch a city bus, which she’s missed before as a result.
Some of the students who testified said they thought things like calculator cubbies, which typically hang on a classroom door or wall, would be a less expensive alternative and would still allow students to access their phones in an emergency.
“People say that it’s a social thing … that phones are detrimental to students' social lives,” Linn told the school board. “But I think that they’re very important parts of students’ social lives in the modern day because the main form of communication is their phones.”
New Portland Public Schools Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong visits teacher Lionel Clegg's first-grade classroom on the first day of school at Woodlawn Elementary, northeast Portland, Ore., Aug 27, 2024. Armstrong says that, while the district has faced struggles, "when I walk through these doors, I see excitement and passion."
Anna Lueck / OPB
Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong also voiced her reservations.
“I don’t support the off-and-away during lunch,” she said when Kunsevi, the board’s student representative, asked for her opinion. “As long as we are an open campus school district for lunch, then our students should have the devices.”
Armstrong doesn’t have a vote on the policy as superintendent.
“(Quite) honestly, policing or monitoring if students have a phone during lunch or off campus, I don’t think is our priority,” she said. “I support the work about removing distractions in the classrooms during the day, and I’m super excited to see what will be the results with increased achievement, increased focus, the opportunity to protect the learning environment for our teachers. And I think all of that is 100% spot on in the right work. I just don’t see how lunch is considered a learning environment.”
The policy goes into effect immediately, but the timeline for implementing it in local schools is unclear. Read the policy and more background information here.