Calvert County Public Schools is reporting near-perfect early compliance with its new bell-to-bell cell phone ban, even as a 16-year-old district student’s petition to loosen the underlying state law has drawn nearly 9,600 signatures.
Superintendent Newsom told the Board of Education this month that after visiting nearly every school in the district during the first weeks of the year, he’d seen only one phone out — and it disappeared within half a second once the student spotted him. “Which means that she knew that it’s not supposed to be out,” he said, thanking administrators, teachers and families for compliance “far beyond the expectations that many people had.”
The policy implements Maryland’s Joanne C. Benson Phone-Free Schools Act (HB 525), which required all 24 county school systems to adopt a policy restricting student phone use for the entire “academic school day” — a definition that includes passing periods and lunch, not just instructional time — beginning with the 2026-2027 school year. Calvert’s board adopted its version in August. Sam Matthias, deputy director for the Maryland Association of Boards of Education, told the board during a legislative update that the Maryland State Board of Education is expected to adopt additional regulations this winter clarifying what counts as acceptable “storage” and “access,” along with exceptions for smartwatches and health-monitoring devices.
Not everyone is satisfied with how broadly the law sweeps. Chyna Washington, a 16-year-old Maryland student, told the board she supports restricting phones during instructional time but wants the law amended to allow access during “self-directed periods” like lunch. “There’s a fundamental difference between a student sitting in a classroom while a teacher is teaching and a student sitting at lunch with their friends,” she said. “Class time is for learning, lunch is a break, and we shouldn’t treat those two situations the same.”
Washington’s petition — created in late August — had drawn 9,340 signatures as of the board meeting and has since grown to nearly 9,600. She asked the board to use its “position and influence to bring concerns of the Maryland students back to the general assembly and advocate for an amendment.”
Another commenter, Diamond Madison Washington, urged the board to keep the current restrictions in place, describing her own history with social anxiety and arguing that phones can serve as a “lifeline” for students during emergencies such as lockdowns or medical crises, when “school intercoms can fail, land lines get jammed, and teachers are overwhelmed.”
Calvert’s student member of the board, Ollie, told the board that concerns about the cell phone policy’s implementation — along with other new school-level restrictive policies — have come up repeatedly in conversations with students since the school year began.
