I think we should go even further: ban all phones during school hours. There is absolutely no reason that kids need to have a phone in school. If the parent needs to reach them, then call the school office who can get your kid on the line. There is no emergency so dire that a few minutes' delay in talking to your child will make a meaningful difference.

> There is absolutely no reason that kids need to have a phone in school.

I commuted one hour from and to middle school and high school, I definitely needed a phone to communicate with my mother when stuff happened (and occasionally happened), such as missing the bus or being late for lunch.

Lots of kids did that before there were mobile phones.

So, pay phone booths for school kids?

When I was in school, you'd just go the main office and ask the secretary. They had a phone that students could use (for free) when they missed the bus or had to reach their parents for something important.

> There is no emergency so dire that a few minutes' delay in talking to your child will make a meaningful difference.

You're neglecting emergencies that are happening in the school itself. School shooters, for instance.

I frankly don't see the problem with kids having the phone with them as long as they're not actually using it outside of an actual emergency.

Would this be a federal ban, a state-level ban managed by education boards, or something else?

And how is it enforced exactly? Are parents held responsible, or are state education funds impacted somehow based on smartphone use?

Would we need a federal mandate to require flip phone / feature phone support? The last time I tried to find a feature phone it wasn't easy, many depend on 2G/3G networks which are losing support and carriers have absolutely no incentive to carry feature phones when smartphones are all that sell.

State bans are already occurring. Indiana just banned phones from schools a week or two ago.

Well I can't really complain about that at least. States have a lot more leeway and are explicitly given the power to manage their public schools.

A quick look at Indiana's law and the news articles are interesting. The law requires schools to implements rules that ban phone use during class, but the actual rules and implementations are left for schools to decide. The articles I found make that sound like the law is toothless and passes the hard work off to school systems, but in my opinion that's a great law as it let's every school do what works best for them without prescribing a single solution for everyone.