{"id":820,"date":"2026-05-13T17:06:44","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/denvermovingchronicle.com\/?p=820"},"modified":"2026-05-13T17:06:44","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:06:44","slug":"hold-the-phone-aurora-schools-scrolling-through-student-phone-policies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/denvermovingchronicle.com\/?p=820","title":{"rendered":"HOLD THE PHONE: Aurora schools scrolling through student phone policies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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AURORA<\/strong> | Aurora Hills Middle School teacher Tracie Jansen, for the most part, has her students work on classroom assignments with pencils and paper. The old school technology in her sixth-and-seventh-grade language arts class, free of cell phones, has breathed new life into the classroom, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy students are more engaged and enabled to access learning without distraction,\u201d Jansen says, adding that the phoneless classroom has done wonders for her students learning English as either their first or second language\u00a0<\/p>\n

Aurora Public Schools rolled out a no-phone pilot district officials are calling \u201caway for the day\u201d in March 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This change came after state lawmakers passed House Bill 25-1135 last year, requiring all Colorado school districts, not including non-district charter schools, to adopt, implement, and publish policies \u201cconcerning communication devices\u201d during the school day. Every district must meet this deadline before July 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The state isn\u2019t dictating cell phone usage in schools, but it\u2019s requiring schools across the state to focus on cell phones in classrooms as schools across the country debate, adopt, or turn back cell phone bans.<\/p>\n

Marisa Vasquez, operations director for middle schools at APS, doesn\u2019t describe the policy they have been trial running as a \u201ccellphone ban\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a developmentally age-appropriate policy for kids who are in pre-school through eighth grade, and then we have a separate policy that is applied to our high school-aged students,\u201d Vasquez says. \u201cSome people do call it a ban, but what it means is that the phone is away during the entire instructional day, starting when the students enter the threshold until they leave school for the day at the end of the day.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nationally, 77% of U.S. schools say they prohibit cellphones at school for non-academic use, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Cherry Creek School District, Arapahoe County\u2019s largest public school district, says that \u201ceach school determines the cell phone protocols that best support their students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elementary schools, including Sunrise Elementary School and Meadow Point, insist that cell phones must be silent and stored at all times while students are at school. Violations result in confiscation of phones, which only parents can retrieve, according to those schools\u2019 websites.<\/p>\n

Most Cherry Creek middle schools with publicized cell phone policies allow students to use them at lunch or during breaks.<\/p>\n

Most Cherry Creek high schools require students to stow and silence phones during instructional time.<\/p>\n

Vasquez says APS has implemented a variety of enforcement systems, including Yondr magnetic pouches, which have become popular at comedy shows and concerts, but it really depends on a school-by-school basis.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The policy] is school-specific,\u201d Vasquez says. \u201cWe have some schools like some of our P-8 schools, that have maybe a hundred kids at each of the middle school grade levels, which is where we most see the need for [the pouch] policy. Some schools manage the \u2018away for the day\u2019 policy as meaning phones in backpacks, and don\u2019t have the need for the magnetic pouches.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vasquez calls the pouches \u201can assist\u201d for larger middle schools where there are several hundred students per grade level.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vasquez said that she has seen a marked change in the students in their pilot schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor students, we\u2019ve seen a very significant increase in their ability to regulate their emotions, and that\u2019s measured by something we call the \u2018Connection, Belong, and Regulation\u2019 survey that we have students take several times throughout the school year.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Vasquez and data from the self-reported survey, students reported a 7% increase\u00a0 \u2014 from 68.9% to 76% \u2014 in positive regulation of their emotions from October of 2025 to January of 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jansen says that she has seen the difference in her classrooms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are students who are not in a hurry to run out of the classroom \u2014 excusing themselves to the bathroom \u2014 because they\u2019re trying to see any sort of information that they received on their phone,\u201d Jansen says. \u201cThey\u2019re not able to check on any concerning information from a friend or to spread gossip. I\u2019ve noticed a lot of students having less behavioral concerns. A lot of bigger fights, a lot of them, were spread via text.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Importantly, Jansen says her students are more focused on the lesson at hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents are more likely to be engaged in lessons and to be more aware for longer periods of time,\u201d Jansen adds. As a teacher, \u201cif you weren\u2019t as quick as a TikTok video, then you had lost their engagement immediately. But a lot of students are willing to go through a lot of harder work to access their learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jansen says that having her students\u2019 full attention is critical, especially since she teaches multi-language learners and has a mix of kids in her classroom. Most importantly, she says her students have been enjoying reading and talking to each other more since the policy was rolled out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although district officials say they have not seen a distinct change in academic performance, Vasquez says that they are hopeful that \u201cwith students able to regulate their emotions at a stronger level,\u201d and that the lack of distractions will translate to the end-of-year summative assessments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some parents have voiced concerns that they might have difficulty contacting their students in the case of an emergency. Jason Maclin, APS\u2019s director of high school operations, says that they had heard those concerns through their parent focus groups, which the district has used to craft their policy language.\u00a0
But Maclin says that the district had convened stakeholder focus groups with students, parents, and staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOverwhelmingly, our parents were concerned with school safety and said, \u2018we\u2019re very much in support of a distraction-free environment, but we\u2019re not in support of a completely phone-free\u2019 with school safety being one of the reasons,\u201d Maclin says.<\/p>\n

Parents reportedly told the district that they would like to have the ability to reach their children in the event of an emergency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

National school safety organizations, like the National Association of School Resource Officers, have said that students are safer when they don\u2019t have their phones during the school day.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Aurora Police Department\u2019s school resource officer team told the Sentinel: \u201cThe schools put out various messaging to parents with accurate and vetted information to limit the possibility of disinformation being disseminated during an emergency, either intentionally or inadvertently. And phone service and school wi-fi can be strained if many students are communicating at the same time, which can affect the ability and performance of school safety equipment\u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the most part, Aurora Public Schools officials say high schools have proposed less strict policies for students, while some elementary schools insist phones are off or even stored while students are in class.<\/p>\n

Recent research on the outcomes of phone bans is varied. Scholars at Stanford University, Duke University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania published their findings with the National Bureau of Economic Research. The NBER study found several key findings:\u00a0<\/p>\n