Smartphones are everywhere these days. But soon, there’s one place you won’t see them: Vermont’s schools.
State lawmakers gave final approval Monday to a bill, H.480, that would ban personal electronic devices in all public schools and all private schools that accept publicly-funded students. (The legislation exempts students who need devices to access special education or homelessness services.)
The ban would go into effect for the 2026-27 school year, which is a little later than Rep. Angela Arsenault, who championed phone-free legislation, said she would have preferred. But otherwise, the Williston Democrat said the bill is basically what she had hoped for. Most notably, Arsenault said in an interview earlier this month, it would prohibit the use of such devices from arrival to dismissal, which advocates often call a “bell-to-bell” ban.
Many schools prohibit phones during class time, but allow students to use them in the hallways or lunch. That’s much harder to enforce, Arsenault said.
“They find that then teachers are still having to say, once kids get into the classroom, ‘Okay, put your phones away. Put your phones away. Okay, I'm going to need your phone.’ And by having a bell-to-bell policy, you eliminate that task for teachers,” she said.
Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, is expected to sign the legislation. While his press secretary, Amanda Wheeler, said in an email that Scott’s office had not yet reviewed the latest iteration of the bill, she wrote that Scott had been “generally supportive of phone-free policies.”
“We often hear phones in the classroom (and in professional settings, for that matter) can be distracting so by implementing these policies, which some schools have already done, it helps students to focus on learning,” Wheeler said.
In red and blue states alike, the phone-free schools movement is enjoying remarkable success — and at breakneck speed. The Associated Press reported last week that a majority of U.S. states now have some sort of law on the books restricting the use of personal devices in schools. Ten states have outright bans in place for the entire school day. The first state to enact such legislation was Florida, less than two years ago.
Rutland Republican Sen. Terry Williams sponsored a phone-free schools bill last year that went nowhere at the time. He speculated that the success of this year’s legislation was due in large part to nationwide momentum behind the issue.
“I think a little bit of public pressure probably made a difference,” he added.
The phone-free movement has been fueled by one of the potent forces in American politics: parents. And celebrity author Jonathan Haidt, who wrote the bestselling book The Anxious Generation, has championed the cause, and even campaigned for Vermont’s legislation.
When Williams’ phone-free bill was introduced in Vermont last year, most major public education groups opposed it. They argued that a top-down, statewide ban would be impractical to enforce and that lawmakers should focus on regulating the underlying technology instead.
But this year, those same groups lined up in support. Mike McRaith, the associate executive director at the Vermont Principals’ Association, said the legislation introduced this year was less expansive, and allowed for more local flexibility in implementation. But schools in Vermont that have implemented phone bans voluntarily this year also provided powerful proof of concept.
Educators in schools that have experimented with bell-to-bell bans are saying they spend less time policing kids on their phones, he said. And students appear to be interacting in healthier ways.
“The anecdote is always that the lunchroom is noisy again — in a good way,” McRaith said.
The link between social media and rising rates of anxiety and depression isn’t yet fully understood. And studies about the efficacy of school phone bans aren’t yet conclusive. But in many places that have put bans in place, glowing testimonials abound.
The Lamoille South Supervisory Union, which includes Morristown, Stowe, and Elmore, went phone-free this year. When superintendent Ryan Heraty recently surveyed teachers there about how the ban had impacted their classrooms, the responses he collected were emphatically and universally positive. Teachers called the ban “transformational,” “amazing,” and “the single best thing that our school/district has ever implemented,” according to an unedited compilation he submitted to lawmakers.
“I enjoy teaching again,” one teacher wrote in response to Heraty’s poll. “I can go back to being a teacher instead of a cell phone cop.”
Some students are still finding work-arounds, teachers reported in Heraty’s survey, including by messaging each other on their laptops. But educators also repeatedly wrote that students were generally less anxious, less distracted, and interacting more with their peers. The superintendent also said the district has noticed a significant decrease in bullying incidents.
“I expected a positive response,” Heraty told Vermont Public. “But I didn't expect that level of positive response.”
