On July 9, Governor Glenn Youngkin issued Executive Order 33 to help bring cell phone-free education to Virginia schools. Recognizing the mental health effects on children and the impact student’s dependence on cell phones are having in our schools, Governor Youngkin directed coordination between VDOE and the Secretary of Education alongside the Secretary of Health and Human Resources, State Health Commissioner, the Department of Health, and the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services to help parents, teachers, and students better understand the effects of cell phone and social media usage on our children.
Governor Youngkin’s Executive Order also charged the Virginia Department of Education with defining what a cell phone-free education means in the Commonwealth and to develop guidance on policies for school divisions to adopt to remove cell phones from instructional time in our K-12 public schools. He requested that the VDOE facilitate a statewide discussion and engagement on cell phone-free education and listen to Virginians’ ideas on how to create a better learning environment without cell phones. To help support Virginia’s parents and teachers, Governor Youngkin looked to VDOE to support school divisions with best practices and other implementation resources to demonstrate where others were already having success removing phones from their schools.
After listening to and reviewing the thousands of comments and suggestions from Virginians on how to bring cell phone-free education to our children’s schools, VDOE has developed draft guidance for school divisions on policies and procedures to be implemented to establish cell phone-free education and remove cell phones from Virginia’s public school classrooms.
The draft guidance defines cell phone-free education in Virginia’s schools as “bell-to-bell”, meaning that phones should be turned off and stored away from the first bell at the start of the school day to begin instructional time until the dismissal bell rings at the end of the academic school day. “Bell-to-bell” includes lunch and time in between class periods.
Virginians will be able to review and comment on the proposed draft guidance until September 15. VDOE will then issue the final guidance on September 16 after reviewing the feedback.