In a world increasingly going mobile, educators nationwide are wrestling with how to get students off their phones during the school day.

At Friday’s AASA conference session titled “Mindshift Over Cellphones: School Districts Discuss Their Paths to Going Phone-Free,” three speakers discussed the effects of ever-present phones on students along with their solutions.

Peter Stieplemen, a senior adviser at YONDR and a former superintendent in Missouri, shared the facts of phone usage among students by offering statistics that showed the prevalence of bullying, anxiety and depression.

That’s where YONDR, a proprietary firm, comes in. YONDR allows students to put their devices into pouches that magnetically lock and cannot be unlocked until the pouch is tapped on an unlocking base.

Program panelist Christy Lobao, superintendent for the Atwater Elementary School District in Atwater, Calif., oversees the new implementation of YONDR in her schools. She praised the positive effects her district has seen.

“The year before YONDR implementation, I had about over 80 suspensions related to cellphone abuse,” she told session attendees. “The year we implemented, I had one.”

Lobao urged educators to seek the advice of city officials, parents and even emergency service officers to gauge the mood around implementing a no-phone school environment.

“The big thing is knowing your community,” she said. “I told my principals to watch all the apps. If you see a parent pushing something or saying something, call them up.”

In Chicopee, Mass., Carol Kruser is overseeing her district’s YONDR use as assistant superintendent. Her schools too have seen relief from the lack of cellphone access by students during the school day, though she reminded the audience that in emergencies students can still access their phones.

“After I implemented YONDR, we did have a lockdown, and it was scary,” Kruser said. “However, your phone is on you and if you really had to rip into it, you can.”

On the matter of students’ behavioral troubles with phone use, Kruser said it was necessary to address the phone issue after students returned from the COVID-19 lockdown and seemed to be glued to trends going viral.

“My bathrooms were being destroyed every single day. They were putting lipstick and nail polish all over the bathroom,” Kruser said. “They were even stealing the soap out of the bathroom.”

In the end, both school system administrators expressed their satisfaction in YONDR’s impact. Kruser highlighted the decline in her district’s early-dismissal rate because now students cannot easily contact parents asking to leave, while Lobao jokingly chimed in that students in her schools now seem to use the bathroom less.

(Mohammad Tantawi, a senior journalism major at Louisiana State University, is a reporter with Conference Daily Online.)