The Republican governor issued an executive order on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024, creating the “Oklahoma Phone-Free Schools Challenge” to encourage schools to limit student cellphone use through cost-neutral strategies. He stopped short of issuing a statewide ban on cellphones in schools and is not requiring districts to participate in the challenge.
Stitt said cellphones and social media have caused a “worrying trend” of distraction, bullying and learning difficulties in schools. His executive order also cites concerns of a negative impact on children’s mental health.
“Those of you in the classroom know the best way to solve this problem, not big government,” the governor said in a pre-recorded video. “Parents, we need to talk to our kids about their screen time and make sure that they’re getting the most out of their school day.”
Stitt enters the school cellphone debate at a time when multiple Oklahoma districts are tightening restrictions on mobile devices in their classrooms and campuses. Seven other states, most of them Republican-led, have mandated that districts implement cellphone-limiting policies or ordered outright bans on cellphone use in schools.
Legislation seeking to limit student cellphone use has been introduced across the country, including in Oklahoma. A bill failed in the state Senate this year that would have offered grants to schools that enact a phone-free campus policy.
Although some Republicans at the state Capitol have said they would support a statewide school cellphone ban, Stitt declined to do so. Instead, his executive order challenges schools to work with families and policy makers to develop commonsense and cost-neutral solutions to reduce student cellphone use.
The policies should be unique to each school, Stitt said, and could be as simple as collecting phones in a cardboard box at the beginning of class.
“As governor and as a dad, I want to fix it,” Stitt said in his video. “But, I know government sometimes makes one-size-fits-all directives, and that’s the problem, not the solution. So instead, I want to partner with teachers and parents in addressing this crisis, not make top-down demands that are impossible to meet. That’s why instead of issuing an order, I’m issuing a challenge.”
Stitt’s secretary of education, Nellie Tayloe Sanders, and the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services will compile a “best practices report” detailing policies that schools develop by Nov. 29, according to the executive order. The Stitt administration will share the report with legislative leaders and state Superintendent Ryan Walters.
Prohibiting cellphones in schools has become a growing trend nationwide. About 76% of all U.S. public schools, including 43% of high schools, prohibit non-academic use of cellphones, according to a report from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Oklahoma’s largest district, Tulsa Public Schools, forbids elementary and middle-school students from using cellphones, smart watches or headphones during the entire school day, and high-school students have to put away these devices during class time.
Bixby Public Schools, south of Tulsa, recently prohibited use of cellphones during school hours for all students in pre-K through ninth grade. High school sophomores, juniors and seniors are allowed to access their cellphones only during non-instructional time, according to a district announcement.
Bixby added the new restrictions after seeing a “significant rise in cyberbullying, unauthorized recordings, loss of academic focus, safety concerns and diminished social interaction.”
“These issues, along with the ongoing power struggles over phone usage, have had a detrimental effect on school culture and supportive relationships,” the district wrote in a back-to-school notice. “It is urgent that we address these issues with the new policy.”
©2024 the Enid News & Eagle (Enid, Okla.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
