Away For The Day | Latest News - How Maine schools are preparing for bell-to-bell cellphone bans

Cameron Levasseur, Bangor Daily News

When Terry Cummings proposed that Washburn District High School adopt a cellphone ban last fall, the assistant principal was met with little resistance.

The school’s administration supported it. Teachers supported it. Even parents broadly supported the policy, he said. And as the school year comes to a close, the rural northern Maine high school’s 89 students have come around to it, or are at least used to putting their phones in a box outside the school’s office every morning.

The ease at which Washburn’s ban occurred is a local example of the sweeping movement to limit cellphone use in schools across the U.S, and the bipartisan support it has generated. More than two dozen states have codified “bell-to-bell” bans that keep phones off and put away during the entire school day.

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