Georgia Senate backs high school cellphone ban, sending bill to Kemp’s desk
The Georgia Senate unanimously passed a ban on smartphones and other devices for high school students Monday, expanding legislation passed last year that prohibits the use of personal electronic devices in grades K-8.
House Bill 1009, already approved by the House, will soon make its way to the desk of Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature. The K-8 mandate takes effect July 1. High schools will be required to follow suit by the 2027-28 school year. The bill makes exceptions for students with special needs.
Restricting use of personal devices in schools has widespread support from parents, teachers and lawmakers. Expanding the K-8 ban to high schools is one of the Georgia Department of Education’s legislative priorities this year. More than 30 states have passed similar bans.
The ‘bell-to-bell’ debate
HB 1009 requires school districts to implement “bell-to-bell” device bans, meaning students can’t access their phones, smartwatches or other electronics at all during the school day. Sen. RaShaun Kemp, D-Atlanta, proposed an amendment to the legislation that would have allowed districts to adopt policies allowing students to use their devices between classes.
“High school students are not elementary school students, are not middle school students,” he said. “We are teaching them to become adults. Many of them have jobs, responsibilities and also children. So I do not believe we should be forcing a 17-year-old, an 18-year-old to have to go out without their phones a whole eight hours.”
The senator pointed to the Fulton County school district, which has adopted a ban on personal devices during instructional periods for high school students. However, students can access electronics between classes. Republicans argued that kind of carve-out could make teachers responsible for policing phone use between classes. Fellow Democrats split on the proposal.
Democratic Sen. Sally Harrell, who co-chaired the legislative Kids Online Safety study committee last fall, said allowing some phone use during the school day could be disruptive.
“What I could see from my own kids when they got smartphones … was that one single text could destroy an evening or destroy a day, and you didn’t know what happened … so that can happen in the hallway, as well,” she said.
Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, said bell-to-bell bans aren’t practical because cellphones have become part of daily life for so many people.
“I can count on two hands the number of people who are on phones right now in this chamber,” she said. “Phones are absolutely just a part of our culture, and for us to just blindly ban them, to give (students) no access, ultimately, I don’t think that it’s realistic.”
The safety argument
Some who oppose cellphone bans in school invoke the text messages that went back and forth between students and their parents the day four people were killed nearly two years ago during a mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder. A group of Apalachee parents and students urged the governor to veto the K-8 cellphone ban last year.
Senate Majority Caucus Chair Shawn Still responded to that criticism by saying phones could be a distraction if there’s an active shooter on campus.
“What would happen if students weren’t listening to their teachers, weren’t listening to the trained professionals, weren’t listening to the adults saying, ‘We’re going to barricade the door; we’re going to stay here?’” he asked.
Majority Whip Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, said emergency systems were overwhelmed the day of the Apalachee shooting, causing confusion and chaos in the aftermath.
“We saw all the dysfunction that occurred when everybody was calling their parents and everybody was calling 911, and first responders could not get to the school because of all the traffic in the road that were not first responder vehicles,” he said.
Kemp’s amendment failed, but the bill sailed through the Senate without a single dissenting vote. It now awaits the governor’s signature.
About the Author
Martha Dalton is a journalist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, writing about K-12 education. She was previously a senior education reporter at WABE, Atlanta's NPR affiliate. Before that, she was a general assignment reporter at CNN Radio. Martha has worked in media for more than 20 years. She taught elementary school in a previous life.
