A proposed bill in Washington state's Legislature during the 2025 session would have banned cellphone use by students in the state's public schools, but it failed to get off the ground.
Lawmakers aren't giving up though.
This year, the Legislature is taking another shot at tackling rampant cellphone use among the state's students, but with a milder approach.
Washington state Sen. Marko Liias, D-Edmonds, appeared in front of the Washington state Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee on Thursday to present Senate Bill 5346. Instead of mandating a ban on devices, Liias said the current version of his bill creates a vision of device-free schools in Washington, or at a minimum device-free classrooms, and asks school boards and the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to help make that happen in a way that works for each of the state's 295 school districts.
“We know that student device use and student device access is harming our young people,” Liias said. “The evidence is now in. We intuitively know it. Parents intuitively know it, but we also now have data.”
The new bill orders the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to commission two reports on cellphone use policies in Washington and in other states and asks that the second report due in 2028 include “evidence-based recommendations” on school cellphone policies, including how those policies are expected to impact students.
Liias said he and others have chosen this approach because they understand that different districts, communities and students have different needs. Devices may at times be necessary, but this policy looks to steer the state's schools toward a system that removes the distraction from learning as best as it can and allows districts to make the final decision using the best data available from the state.
“Writing a one-size-fits-all in every community in every district is not practical,” Liias said. “But what we can do as a Legislature is create the vision and say, ‘we want device-free schools in Washington,’ and let's get data and let's find out what our districts are doing and let's make sure that our school boards have the best available information. So, as they’re deciding what kind of policy they’re going to adopt at the local level, they do it guided by facts.”
The announcement of the bill comes as there is increasing dialogue in many other states and here locally about the use of smartphones and mobile devices in the classroom. More than 20 states in the U.S. have passed some sort of ban on cellphone use in public schools. Some during the public testimony on the bill Thursday urged lawmakers to mimic that approach and institute an outright bell-to-bell ban on device use. Given the fate of a bill that could have done that last year, a hardline approach seems unlikely to succeed.
Washington has, in previous years, begun making more information about smartphone use available to school districts, their administrators and boards of directors. It even recommended that districts develop policies for this school year.
Lewis County’s two largest school districts — Centralia and Chehalis — did just that ahead of the 2025-26 academic year. The boards of both districts attempted to address the matter by revising or revamping their districts cellphone policies to be more standardized and clear. In both districts, that took the form of a strict “no cellphones in class” policy with an emphasis on being clear and deliberate with students and the community.
Previous reporting, most recently by The Spokesman-Review during the 2025 legislative session, showed many schools already have a no-phones-in-class policy, but that those policies are not enforced or enforced in an uneven way.
The Centralia School District took a more proactive approach to cellphone policy enforcement at Centralia High School this year, making it clear from the outset that if a teacher saw a phone in class, they would confiscate it. Those phones then go to the front office to be collected at the end of the day. Students in the district's elementary and middle schools already were — and still are — expected to keep phones away all day, but the high school is more difficult, according to Centralia School District Superintendent Lisa Grant.
“High school is the trickiest spot, right,” Grant said. “Older, more responsible students. We did redefine that policy and then kind of re-implemented it this fall, to make kids more accountable … And yes, we have seen a large impact.”
During a meeting with the Centralia School District Board of Directors ahead of this academic year, Grant and CHS Principal Scot Embrey pitched the idea and stressed that the new effort would be about clarity and consistency. The two administrators expected from the outset that they would see many cellphone violations early on and said that those violations reducing over time as students adjusted to the new rule would signal a job well done.
According to Grant, that's exactly what has happened. She added that cutting down on cellphone use has done more than just improve focus — it has also triggered a change in social behavior among students.
“We've seen less issues around social media because they don't have them out all the time,” Grant said. “You know, you can't say ‘meet me in the bathroom’ or ‘meet me here.’”
The Chehalis School District took a very involved approach to a new cellphone use policy that stretches back to last spring. The board approved a revised cellphone policy ahead of the 2025-26 academic year after a process that involved committees, parent surveys and public engagement to gauge how the community felt about cellphone use in school and how to best approach rules around their use.
W.F. West Principal Regina Carr said the policy has been incredibly well received by the community, including staff, parents and even students at the school.
“I think students are starting to feel technology fatigue, right? I think they want to be off their phones and they are ready for the shift,” she said.
While the school does not have exact data on the impact the change has made on students, Carr testified to seeing fewer phones used during her regular rounds of the school and even during transition times and lunch periods when students are allowed to use their devices. She is a believer that the impact of stronger phone policies will become more and more clear.
“I would love to see the impact on kids in a year or two, of how it really has shifted our mental health, our wellbeing in schools and their cognitive and academic development,” Carr said. “I think it's going to have a significant impact.”
While educators from both districts can testify to the importance of the new focus on limiting the use of mobile devices such as smartphones, smart watches and other technology, they both also are clear that they have no taste for a broad statewide ban or statewide policy.
Instead, it’s the local control and the communication of why the policies are needed that they say have made the policy valuable.
“I believe a locally tailored approach is more effective than a broad state mandate, as it allows for flexibility and nuance that individual districts require,” Chehalis School District Superintendent Rick Goble said in an email.
Both districts have also brought up common concerns over broad phone bans, such as emergency situations at the school, whether that be a natural disaster or active shooter event.
A parent survey from the Chehalis School District shows a massive majority of parents would like their students to go to school with a phone often for safety reasons. How those phones are restricted after that is more nuanced.
The same survey shows a balance with families of W.F. West High School students supporting, by a large margin, device use being allowed only at designated times. A broader survey of families across the Chehalis School District with students between sixth grade and senior year shows wide support for allowing students to bring their phones to school but requiring those phones be stored away during school hours.
As things stand now, both districts appear to be satisfied with their policies as they stand and are not expecting any changes to them anytime soon. As far as the state's involvement in cellphone policy, both districts are open to additional information, data, research or even guidelines, but remain skeptical of anything more that may dictate local district policy.
