Analy cracks down on cell phones

Many teachers say, "It's about time."

Analy High School has had a policy of banning cell phones during class time for a while now, but until this week the policy has been inconsistently enforced.

That may be changing. In April’s Analy newsletter, the Paw Print, Analy Principal Churck Wade wrote, “We will be implementing changes to our cell phone policy, which has been updated in the student handbook…While we realize that in some ways this is an incremental change, we see it as a move toward an educational environment where cell phones are the exception rather than the rule. We are committed to a phone-free educational environment during class time, and we have empowered staff to enforce this policy in and out of the classroom.”

The new policy reads as follows:

Cell Phone Policy

Cell phones are allowed on campus, but must be turned off and put away during class time. Cell phones must be in the teacher caddy or zipped up in student backpacks (including TA’s). This includes during class time when the student is not in the class, for example when on a restroom break.

All students must leave their cell phone in order to take a bathroom pass. Students using their cell phones when out with a pass will be sent to the office.

If a student is using their cell phone during class time, the following consequences apply:

First offense: Teacher or other staff member will confiscate cell phone and submit it to the office. The cell phone will be released to the student at the end of the day.

Second offense: Teacher or other staff member will confiscate the cell phone and submit it to the office. The cell phone will be released to the student at the end of the day, and the student will receive a lunchtime detention.

Third offense: Teacher or other staff member will confiscate the cell phone and submit it to the office. Cell phones will be released to parents or guardians only. Administration will meet with students and parents/guardians to address the problem.

Students are not allowed to take pictures or videos of students or staff without their direct consent.

No pictures or videos can be taken in any restrooms.

This is against the law and school policy.

This policy is very similar to the school’s earlier cell phone policy. The differences include a new ban on taking phones into the restrooms during class time; a stronger punishment for a second offense; and a ban on students using their cell phones when out and about with a hall pass during class time.

Last September, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 3216, the Phone-Free School Act, which requires every school district, charter school and county office of education to develop policies limiting the use of smartphones by July 1, 2026.

“We know that excessive smartphone use increases anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues—but we have the power to intervene,” Newsom said at the time. “This new law will help students focus on academics, social development, and the world in front of them, not their screens, when they’re in school.”

Wade said that Analy didn’t want to wait until 2026 to put this important measure into action.

“We think cell phone use is a tremendously important mental and emotional health issue for our young people,” Wade wrote to the Sebastopol Times. “This is a topic I've written about in our campus newsletter and something about which our superintendent and board are keenly aware.”

“While the policy is in line with Governor Newsom's goal of limiting the use of smartphones, it’s really in the practice and implementation of the policy that the benefits to the students are seen,” he added.

Even before this new cellphone policy, some teachers had already put cell-phone-free policies in place in their own classrooms.

“Some of the core freshmen teachers are going all in for no cellphones,” Spanish teacher Junie Moon Curtiss wrote us back in March before the new policy was announced. “Some other freshmen teachers are less enthusiastic or even indifferent, so the kids are having very diverse experiences depending on the class.”

Curtiss said the rules, as stated in the handbook, are clear—phones are not allowed during class time unless a teacher allows them for educational purposes. She praised school secretary Sandra Jones, who handles the referrals for infractions, for being “very solid and enthusiastic working with those teachers who are strict about this,” Curtiss continued.

Curtiss said she has been beating the drum for a more rigorous cell phone ban for several months. For much of that time, she said, “I got nothing more than thoughts and prayers from the administration, like, ‘Oh, that sounds great.’”

She was pleased by the administration’s new announcement.

“It is moving forward,” she said. “Will we get slightly more compliance than we had before? I think so. Did the administration help shore up and clarify its position? I think they finally did—they said, ‘We care about this topic,’ which is what we’ve been begging them to do.”

She hopes the new rules will be enforced.

“I walked into a teacher’s class today, and all of the kids in this class were on their cell phones, and I don’t mean using them for work; I mean playing,” she said. “So, right now, there’s no clarity around how it’s gonna be enforced.”

“There are teachers who aren’t on board,” she said. She said being “on board” meant understanding “that TikTok is dangerous to children and that the parents of eighth-grade students don’t want their kids to be allowed to use cell phones during class time. It means you understand the core problem…that it’s an illness, and we’re feeding it by not getting in front of it. We have to be the grown-ups in the room. And you’re not being ‘the fun teacher,’ you’re not being ‘the good teacher,’ you’re not being ‘the cool teacher’ by letting them use their cell phones. You’re actually feeding their addiction, making them more depressed, making them more nervous, making them more anxious.”

Principal Chuck Wade said that enforcing what goes on inside of classrooms is “very challenging.”

“We’re going to have conversations really,” he said. “It’s less about enforcement and more about support. So what can we do to help the teacher if that is a problem for them?”

Wade said different teachers have different ways of dealing with cell phones—some just require that phones remain in students’ backpacks during class, but others have cell phone storage systems—wooden boxes or even old-fashioned hanging shoe bags—where students drop off their phones as they walk into class.

Unsurprisingly, the new ban is not universally popular with students.

“I think the freshman phone ban is kinda of a good and a bad,” said Harry, a ninth grader. “It’s good because when you’re out on a break from classes, you’re not on your phone. And [in class], the phone ban allows everyone a chance to take a break because usually when people take their phone they are gone for a long time. But it’s also a bad thing for now in every class you have to give your phone away or put it in a little holder till the end of the class. I don’t care for this because I will never know if someone needs something because I don’t have my phone.”

“Most of the students I’ve seen have been upset by this ban,” Harry said. “All the classes that don’t enforce it [the phone ban] go by very smoothly because you can listen to music and get your work done and if you have extra time, you have time to relax and hang out. Some students are on their phones, but if the teacher says something to them, they put it away and only take it out when the teacher says it’s okay or in their free time.”

On the other hand, history teacher John Grech, who has always had a strict cell phone policy, said, “Several students have said to me, ‘I appreciate your low-tech environment. I appreciate reading things on paper rather than online. I learn it better. I absorb it better.’ So that is going on too.”

Grech agrees with Curtiss that teacher attitudes toward cell phones vary widely, with some teachers encouraging students to use phones for their school work and others banning them outright during class time.

“What makes it so difficult for Analy High School—and probably any high school—is that some teachers deal with cell phones very differently than others,” Grech said. “I think administrations all around the state and across the country are in a tight pickle because if some teachers are lax with cell phones—they don’t want a confrontation, they don’t want to confiscate cell phones—then those teachers that do want to be strict about cell phones during class time, we're fighting an uphill battle.”

Grech said he is firmly in that latter camp.

“Teaching is just so difficult when you’re competing with cell phone distractions,” he said.

Grech said he has to take a cell phone away from a student about once a day, sometimes more. He also gave a shout-out to Sandra Jones, the school secretary who is in charge of dealing with confiscated phones.

“When I confiscate cell phones for the third time, a parent has to pick it up, and I understand from the administration that a lot of times parents are not very cooperative,” Grech said. “I mean, they kind of read them the riot act about how ‘I want to be able to communicate with my kid at any time’ and ‘You don’t have the right to take the phone away from him or her.’”

Curtiss said that other parents, who may be fighting their own battles over cell phone usage at home, are grateful that the school is taking a harder line.

A veteran teacher, Grech said he’s seen the effect that cell phones have had on students’ ability to pay attention and to read.

“I can’t say that strongly enough,” he said. “The reading level has plummeted, vocabularies have plummeted, the ability to focus and attention spans have plummeted…It’s to the point where, if I assign a few paragraphs, it’s some big deal. It’s not that they can’t read, it’s that they don’t want to.”

“I’ve been in this game 28 years, and, in the last 10, there have been precipitous drops,” he said. “I mean, you can just see it getting worse and worse every year.”

“For me, the solution is, the less cell phone use, the better,” Grech said. “I think cell phones are perfectly appropriate during break or during lunch. That’s all fine, but during class time, I just feel like there needs to be a united front to stop it.”

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