EVANSVILLE — Waiting for area public school students and parents next school year is an Indiana state law that makes one flat, nonnegotiable demand.
Effective July 1, students may not use wireless communication devices, which the statute defines as any portable, wireless device with the capability to provide voice messaging or other data communication between two or more parties, including cellphones, tablets, laptops, gaming devices and smart watches.
Here’s the kicker: The prohibition goes further than a state law passed in 2024 that banned “any portable wireless device” from being used during instructional time. It bans them for the entire school day — bell-to-bell.
Senate Enrolled Act 78, which Gov. Mike Braun signed in March — and again ceremonially on May 13 — applies to public schools, corporations and charter schools but not to private schools.
“This law supports teachers in the classroom and helps students build better habits at a time when constant distraction is affecting learning and mental health, with common-sense exceptions for emergencies,” Braun said in a news release.
Among its other exceptions, the ban does not apply to students whose device use is included in their Individualized Education Programs or 504 disability plans, is medically necessary or necessary for language translation when no school-managed device is available.
There are two ways school districts can handle this policy-wise. The new law allows districts to require devices to be powered off, stored away and inaccessible — or to forbid the devices from being brought to school altogether.
The statute would come with consequences for violations regardless of which policy option school districts choose, according to Indiana School Boards Association guidance.
“A student may be disciplined including suspended or expelled for using a wireless electronic device in a manner for violating this policy and may have the device confiscated by school administration,” the ISBA guidance states. “The device will be returned to the parent.”
Area districts won’t forbid devices on school property
Area school districts, including Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation, said they do not anticipate needing to spend more money for storage lockers for wireless electronic devices.
The conversation is not about flatly forbidding devices on school grounds.
EVSC Chief of Staff Rick Cameron gave the school board a proposed policy Monday night — one the school corporation won’t make public until the board votes on it in two weeks. The policy doesn’t dictate precisely where devices may be stored, Cameron said afterward. Those details will be worked out later.
But Cameron gave the school board a general direction.
“We’re still working out the logistics,” he said. “It’s probably primarily going to be lockers or some other place that the device will be stored.”
Warrick County School Corp. has been requiring high school students to store away their devices, including during passing periods but not during lunch periods. The corporation is complying with the “instructional time” statute enacted in 2024.
“Students will be required to store in their lockers for the school day,” WCSC Superintendent Abbie Redmon told the Courier & Press by email. “Please note, for WCSC, the only change this brings is for our high school students. Our K-8 students already store in lockers for the entire day.
“If for some reason students or families do not want students to store cellphones in their lockers, they have the option to store in their vehicles or leave at home,” Redmon wrote.
Other area school districts told the Courier & Press that outright forbidding students to bring electronic devices to school likely would cause more problems than it would solve.
“I think still at the end of the day, especially in today’s world, parents want to be able to get ahold of their students in some way, shape or form,” said Michael Galvin, superintendent of East Gibson School District. “A lot of our students participate in athletics and so after those school hours, if for some reason, athletic practice is canceled or something like that, and they’re not driving yet, they want to be able to have that capability to communicate with their child and their child communicate with them.”
East Gibson plans to allow students to store their powered down devices in their lockers or their backpacks.
Same deal at North Gibson School Corp., where the plan is to have students store their powered off devices in their lockers.
“(Parents) are concerned that they wouldn’t be able to reach their child, or their child wouldn’t be able to reach them in an emergency situation,” said Superintendent Eric Goggins. “However, we have to comply with the law, and certainly our buildings will be available for parents to reach out to the school through our phone system, should they need to get in touch with their students.”
South Gibson School Corp. hasn’t finalized its approach, Superintendent Bryan Perry said, but the gist of it is that students will be expected to use their lockers or bookbags.
Forbidding devices on school grounds “would be an option, but I think we also have to remember that many of your students have afterschool activities etc. and they don’t have cars or ways to contact their parents,” Perry said.
“We have a lot of kids that are in afterschool activities, be it theater, music or athletic events,” he said. “They’re very busy young people. Some of them are going straight to work from here as well.”
Metropolitan School District of North Posey Superintendent Todd Slagle and Metropolitan School District of Mount Vernon Superintendent Stephanie Stewart did not return messages from the Courier & Press for this story.
The details are coming
Julie Slavens, director of policy services for ISBA, told the Courier & Press that the path chosen by area school districts has emerged as more or less a consensus among districts in the state.
“I think most school boards in the state are saying (students) can bring (wireless electronic devices) to school, but they’re inaccessible — and there’s various ways, obviously, that they can make them inaccessible,” Slavens said. “It’s up to the local boards to decide which options they want and how they’re going to store them and all that.”
EVSC is awaiting guidance from the Indiana Department of Education that will go to all school districts. IDOE told the Courier & Press that its annual comprehensive legislative guidance document intended to help K-12 educators implement newly enacted legislation “will be available prior to July 1.”
The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette reported last week that the new wireless electronic devices law is prompting Northwest Allen County Schools to spend about $250,000 on more than 400 lockers for storage at Carroll High School.
“With the new requirements of having to store cellphones during the day… we actually do need some more lockers,” NACS chief financial officer Brandon Basham told the school board there on May 4.
Cameron and EVSC spokesman Jason Woebkenberg told the Courier & Press that EVSC won’t have to make such a purchase as it opts to allow devices to be powered off and inaccessible on school grounds.
“There’s not a current plan to do that,” Cameron said after Monday night’s board meeting.
Woebkenberg added: “I have certainly not heard of anything where our students don’t have an appropriate number of lockers.”
“We have not talked about (buying more lockers) at this time,” he said.
EVSC will communicate whatever it ultimately decides to all students and parents and will strive for consistency, Woebkenberg pledged.
“We want students to be able to learn in a great school environment free of distractions,” he said.
“Free of distractions,” Cameron echoed.
But some students may not be so willing to be free of distractions, especially if they are allowed to keep their devices in their bookbags. High school students have been known to put their devices out of sight when prompted, only for the devices to reappear again and again. Hearing teachers explain that it’s a state law may not mean much to them.
“You might have a few that … it’d take them a little longer to learn that they’re not supposed to have them out,” South Gibson’s Perry said. “But the expectations need to be set and everybody in the building following the same guidelines.”
Perry is optimistic that compliance won’t turn into a huge headache for teachers and administrators in his district. But he knows the allure of cellphones in particular.
“People in general, I think, are pretty addicted to using their phones,” he said. “They control an awful lot of what you do in life now. Actually, I’d just as soon not be so tethered to mine.”
EVSC Superintendent Darla Hoover, who was a teacher earlier in her career, has a hunch.
“I anticipate earbuds being a struggle at the beginning,” Hoover told the school board. “You know, all the times we’ve seen people with one earbud in and then one not — but they (students) won’t be able to do that.”
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: EVSC, area school districts are girding for tough new cellphone law
Reporting by Thomas B. Langhorne, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
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