Oakdale Joint Unified School District just may be ahead of the curve by way of student cell phone guidelines.

Yet to ensure they are on point and students, parents and staff are right there with them, attention is once again being given to cell phone use – or lack thereof – on campuses throughout the district.

“In 2024, September of 2024, our Governor passed a law that was the Phone-Free Schools Act, requiring every district to adopt policy limiting or prohibiting school cell phone use at site,” Catherine Medlin, OJUSD Director of Child Welfare and Attendance stated.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 3216 in September of 2024 as Medlin noted. The Act requires all California districts, charter schools and offices of education to implement policies banning student smart phone use by July 1, 2026.

“Ours has been in place for many years,” Medlin shared of the OJUSD policy. “It has limited or prohibited use of cell phones on campus.”

The recent re-visit to the Oakdale policy, Medlin confided, was in part response to the OJUSD Board of Trustees who desired an update on guidelines for secondary campuses.

Generally, the guideline is phones put away and not for use while on campus, though there are a few exceptions. The noted exceptions include: in the event of emergency with permission given by the instructor or administrator, noted as an IEP accommodation or for health needs, such as diabetes.

“We definitely need parents to not phone or text their student during the school day,” Medlin said. “They can call the office. We will get messages to the students. We also need them to understand when kids are using them during class and they’re not supposed to be, there are consequences for that.”

The consequences do vary by campus. For the elementary school the student loses the phone for the day and may retrieve it from their school office at the end of the day. For the junior high and high school there is a progressive disciplinary action. A second offense may be another warning or the phone being confiscated and may require that the parent retrieve it from the office at the end of the day, depending on the given situation. The final disciplinary action would be the phone taken away, parent retrieving the phone and potentially detention or in house suspension for repeat offenders.

While students may lead their parents to believe one thing regarding cell phone use on campus, Medlin emphatically shared cell phones are not needed in class for learning.

“Our policy has always been off and put away,” she said, preferably in a backpack.

“In classes teachers are not having students use their phones. Phones need to be off and need to be put away during class,” Medlin continued. “I know a lot of students would say, I need to have my phone because we use it in class. We would never expect a student to do an assignment that needed their phone in order to do that assignment, because we have Chromebooks.”

While security remains the biggest issue of students using their phones while on campus, there’s also a mental health element which the administrator feels is important to note.

“It is a mental health thing. It can be detrimental and it’s hard to continue your school day when you’re feeling bad about something you’ve seen on social media,” she shared. “We don’t want the school site to be a platform for posting those types of things and things that are happening at school. Cyber bullying or anything else, we want to take that component away from the school day.”

Medlin shared the need for help from parents in continuing to implement this on the OJUSD campuses. Surveys will be sent out for parents and students to offer feedback, which she feels is very helpful.

As for the student or parent who feel the phone is personal property not permissible for administrators to take, the solution there for Medlin is simple.

“It’s just like any prohibited item at school,” she said. “They don’t need it for school. That’s a personal property that you don’t want anyone to take or confiscate then it doesn’t need to come to school, because we have phones available in the office.”