Jennifer Chace, Ph.D., is the assistant director of the Center for Education Policy, Applied Research and Evaluation at the University of Southern Maine. She is also the co-founder and board chair of The Source School, a Maine 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Eric Waddell is the executive director of the Maine School Management Association and the former superintendent of schools in Kittery.

School is going to be different this year. Students are going to school without their own phones for the first time in over a decade. Yes, classrooms will have fewer digital distractions, but our question needs to be, will students truly be more engaged?

We know these distracting activities have been occurring during class time and have seen the negative effects on individual students and also the broader classroom learning environment. Teachers can feel they are in a losing competition for students’ attention. An endless and “free” supply of addictive entertainment has been at students’ fingertips, whether through cellphones themselves or laptops mirroring the contents of cellphones stored in a nearby phone hotel.

If we truly want to prioritize students’ learning outcomes, learning environments must be conducive to learning. Removing phones from school very likely is one part of the solution. School districts had a few short months to adopt policy in response to Gov. Mills’ April 2026 ban on phones in schools. To support that process, a model policy was shared by the Maine School Management Association (MSMA) earlier this summer.

There is no mechanism to ensure compliance with this law and no monitoring authority given to the Department of Education. Yet, the spirit of the law seems to be generally embraced by district leaders and many teachers and parents as well.

Fiscal and logistical challenges abound for districts as they implement the new policy, which is broader than many already in place, yet no challenge may be more important than gaining the support of those most directly affected by the policy — students themselves.

While our experience and collection of anecdotes tell us that many educators are grateful for the clarity of the state law, we, and they, also know students will easily circumvent the restrictions if they wish to. And they wish to. Even if only to assert their independence, a developmentally appropriate response in later middle school and high school, to be sure.

How much attention may be paid to using fine tip pens to pop open Yondr pouches, finding the bathroom not supervised by a custodian or procuring fake phones to “pouch” in front of administrators? Just ask students in your family or neighborhood. A lot, and perhaps mostly by students who are the most academically and socially vulnerable.

A public middle and high school in the Bronx tried another way. In response to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s 2025 statewide cellphone ban, the school had expanded its restriction on devices from middle school to high school over the summer.

Yondr pouches, a secure, lockable fabric case, had been purchased, in the poorest congressional district in the country, to prevent students from accessing their phones during the school day. Neither teachers nor students had been substantively involved in the decision to purchase the pouches because school leaders saw their actions as simply responsive to the new law. What choice did they have? 

But when presented with the option, in July 2025, the Bronx school principal also joined an effort by the Maine nonprofit The Source School to create dialogue around cellphone use in schools by hosting a schoolwide dialogue campaign around cellphone use and a student-teacher civic assembly to make policy improvement recommendations.

The two-day structured deliberation process was a roaring success, fostering mutual understanding and deeper connections between adults and teens, increasing student understanding of the harms of social media and cellphone use at school and strengthening students’ civic muscles and willingness to engage productively on policy issues with school leadership.

Three new policies supporting student attention to learning were unanimously recommended by the student-teacher delegation and accepted for implementation by the principal. Slides sharing the process and resources and a short film are available to the public. (Spoiler alert: None of the recommendations increased students’ time with their cellphones.)

Maine is now scaling that success statewide through an MSMA partnership with USM’s Center for Education Policy, Applied Research and Evaluation (CEPARE) and The Source School. 

This fall, Maine districts are invited to send a small team of students, educators and an adult school board member to Listening Schools Day in Bangor on Nov. 11, Veterans Day. School teams will engage in the co-design of a civic assembly that reflects the needs and uniqueness of Maine’s schools, to be held on Jan. 29 and 30. They will also leave the one-day workshop prepared to hold schoolwide listening and dialogue campaign the week of Dec. 7.

Student-facilitated civic dialogue circles will explore experiences with cellphones and electronic devices at school and possible implementation solutions. Parents will be engaged as well. Data from schools participating in Listening Schools Week will inform the delegates to the civic assembly.

The result of the two-day civic assembly will be a set of recommendations for local districts to consider as they work out the implementation of their new policies. Recommendations will be formally shared by delegates with the Maine School Boards Association (MSBA) board of directors at the civic assembly itself. Other state leaders will be invited to join as well.

To be sure, students want their cellphones. (We do too.) But the success of the Bronx assembly, as well as what the AASA/The School Superintendents Association, National Association of Student Councils and teachers across the country know tell us this: When given appropriate support, space, and time, students can engage productively in policy discussions, even on the topics most near and dear to their hearts. 

And when students do, they are engaging in deeper learning. They are focusing their attention on what matters most, strengthening hope and agency and creating an educational environment that just may be the most conducive to learning of all.