We hope you had an amazing summer break. It was wonderful to see the excitement of our students coming back to campus during registration.  As we inch closer to the beginning of the school year, we wanted to take this opportunity to share a shift in our district cell phone policy.  California law requires all school districts to adopt a policy limiting or prohibiting student smartphone use during school hours under Assembly Bill 3216 (the Phone-Free School Act), which took effect on July 1, 2026.  While this assembly bill doesn’t completely ban cell phones, it does push for the removal of cell phone distractions during instructional time. Attached is our updated cell phone policy for the school year.  Please review the policy with your student before the school year begins. 

Much of this is based on recent research into the impact of cell phones on students' mental health and focus. One of the most popular books on the subject is The Anxious Generation, by Jon Haidt, that talks about the “rewiring of childhood”. For our students, some of his suggestions are taking place too late, but on the website, you can review some of the evidence and his suggestions for combating what’s happened to our students.

To help our students, the district has partnered with CLocked. This app allows students to hold on to their phones, but remain distraction free during instruction.  This is an app that prevents a student from accessing distracting social media, YouTube, and/or games on their device during class time. 

The functionality works like this: CLocked will be downloaded on the student's device.  When coming to school, a QR code will be scanned in the student's first class of the day. During the school day, students will be able to access apps essential to school like Aeries, Google Classroom, and 5-Star Students.  App lockdown time is linked to our Bell schedule. This means that the student’s phone will completely unlock during passing periods, snack, and lunch.  The phone’s calling function will be active at all times.  If there is an emergency on campus, all phones can be unlocked by an admin with the click of a button.

It is important to note that CLocked does not monitor students' personal content, messages, or photos. It simply manages access to designated apps during the school day in accordance with district policy.

Our goal is to preserve the integrity of instructional time and limit technological distractions. To help students who struggle with behavior related to cell phones, we have put the following steps in place.

• Step 1 - Confiscation by teacher or staff member. Student pick up at the end of the day from the Main Office.  Referral to the main office and a warning regarding future consequences.

• Step 2 - Confiscation of cell phone until the end of the day and Parent pick up—assignment of Detention.

• Step 3 - Confiscation and parent/guardian pick up of electronic device and Saturday School.

• Step 4 - Confiscation, and parent/guardian must meet with administration and Saturday School.

• Step 5 - A daily check-in for the student and the device will be conducted, and the device will be locked in a Yondr Pouch during instructional time.