A Parent & Guardian Position Statement and Petition on S-3695/A-4882 (P.L.2025, c.195)
By Talia Anya Korik, 11th grade, Park Ridge High School

The Law
On January 8, 2026, Governor Phil Murphy signed a "bell-to-bell" cell phone ban requiring every New Jersey public school district to restrict student use of internet-enabled devices for the entire school day, effective the 2026-27 school year.

The statute carves out exceptions only for verified emergencies, translation needs, and documented medical necessity — leaving no room for a student to check a text between classes, at lunch, or during a free period.

Our Ask
We support removing phones as a classroom distraction during actual instructional time.

We ask the Legislature to amend the law so districts retain discretion to permit personal device use during clearly non-instructional windows — passing periods, lunch, and designated free/study periods — while keeping phones off during class.

This is not a repeal. It is a scalpel where the current law uses a hammer.

1. The Law Is Broader Than What Most Schools Already Do
New Jersey's law is stricter than the national norm: A 2025 RAND Corporation nationally representative survey of principals found that only 23% of U.S. high schools use a full bell-to-bell policy, while 49% already restrict phones during class but allow use at lunch and during passing periods, with no reported loss of the classroom-focus benefits schools are seeking.

Students themselves draw the same line: In that same RAND survey, 60% of youth supported restrictions on phones during class, but only 11% supported a bell-to-bell ban covering the entire school day, including lunch. A policy this far outside the mainstream, even among students who accept classroom limits, is worth revisiting.

Local control is already the law's own principle: The New Jersey School Boards Association advocated throughout the legislative process for local flexibility in device policies. A partial carve-out for non-instructional periods extends that same principle. It doesn't depart from it.

2. A Total Ban Can Work Against Student Safety
Real incidents show phones save critical time in crises: During the 2022 Robb Elementary shooting in Uvalde, Texas, some of the most critical 911 information, where trapped students were and how many were hurt, came from children's own cell phones inside locked classrooms.

During the 2024 Apalachee High School shooting in Winder, Georgia, many students texted parents in real time to say they were safe; those who could not reach a phone described the added fear of not being able to do the same.

We acknowledge the counter-argument and it doesn't reach our ask: School-safety consultants (e.g., Ken Trump, National School Safety and Security Services) rightly warn that mass calling during an active lockdown can jam networks, draw parents into the path of first responders, and distract students from following adult instructions.

Those are arguments for keeping phones silenced and away during class and lockdowns and not for confiscating them during lunch or a free period, when a phone is often a student's fastest way to reach help if something happens in an unsupervised hallway, stairwell, or cafeteria.

3. Parental Rights and Student Access to Support
Parents, not the state, should set family communication norms outside of class: Working parents, families coordinating medical care, custody schedules, or after-school logistics for younger siblings rely on brief contact windows during the day.

The same RAND survey found parents' inability to reach their child was the single most-cited reason (81%) students give for opposing stricter phone rules, and 21% of principals said the loss of that direct line was a real drawback of their own policy.

Courts have long recognized students retain rights at the schoolhouse gate: Tinker v. Des Moines, 393 U.S. 503 (1969) held that students don't "shed their constitutional rights... at the schoolhouse gate."

While courts give schools real latitude over conduct during instructional time, a rule with no discretion at all for unsupervised free time is worth asking the Legislature to revisit.

Petition
By signing this petition, I support amending P.L.2025, c.195 to permit district-level discretion for personal device use during non-instructional periods (passing time, lunch, and free/study periods) while maintaining a phone-free classroom.