Montclair students will return to school next week under a markedly different set of rules for technology: no phones, smart watches or earbuds from the opening bell until dismissal — and, in many classrooms, considerably less time on Chromebooks as well.
Superintendent Ruth B. Turner outlined the new bell-to-bell policy in an Aug. 25 letter to families, replacing a looser standard that allowed students to keep phones powered off in backpacks or lockers.
“We’re making a change we believe in deeply: helping your children be more present in their classrooms, with their teachers, and with each other,” Turner wrote.
The new restrictions bring Montclair into compliance with a statewide law, enacted in January, requiring New Jersey school districts to prohibit students from using personal internet-enabled devices throughout the school day. At the time, Montclair had continued operating under its existing policy while awaiting additional state guidance.
Individual schools have begun sending families their own instructions for how the rules will work inside their buildings. But the districtwide parameters are established by Turner’s letter and a new Technology Usage Plan, which also signals a broader shift away from screens as the default mode of classroom instruction.
Phones Must Be Off and Put Away All Day
The district’s K-8 Technology Usage Plan defines personal internet-enabled devices broadly. The restrictions cover not only cellphones but smart watches, smart glasses, tablets and internet-connected earbuds or headphones.
Devices brought to school must be powered off and stored in a designated location for the entire instructional day. Silencing a phone or keeping it tucked inside a backpack will no longer be enough.
Violations will be addressed under Board Policy 2363 and the district’s Code of Conduct and Restorative Justice Practices. Some schools are adding more specific consequences. Buzz Aldrin Middle School, for example, has told families that unauthorized cellphone use may result in confiscation, with a parent or guardian required to retrieve the device in person.
Turner said the bell-to-bell restriction applies to students from prekindergarten through 12th grade. The written technology plan released this week, however, applies specifically to grades K through 8, leaving some details at Montclair High School unresolved.
Asked how the statewide mandate would work at a high school where students are permitted to leave campus during the day, Principal Jeffrey Freeman said additional guidance was still coming.
“There will be a bell-to-bell cell phone ban at MHS,” Freeman told The Montclair Pod. “It will be a little different than the other schools due to the open campus. More information will be sent out from the central office about this.”
The District Is Also Cutting Back on Chromebooks
The changes extend well beyond students’ personal devices.
Montclair’s new technology plan calls for substantially less classroom screen time, particularly in the elementary and middle grades, and restores pencil-and-paper work as the default for many assignments and assessments.
In kindergarten through second grade, Chromebook use will largely be limited to district-approved benchmarks, assessments and state testing.
Students in grades 3 through 5 will follow what the district calls a “Chromebook Cart Technology Model.” Rather than having devices incorporated routinely into instruction, teachers will use them for specific projects when the technology serves a stated academic purpose.
The restrictions become more prescriptive in middle school. Students in grades 6 through 8 are limited to 20 minutes of Chromebook use per course each week, with exceptions for standardized testing and progress monitoring for students receiving academic interventions.
Teachers across grade levels are also being asked to limit instructional technology — including presentations and short videos — to roughly 10 to 15 minutes of a lesson. Digital assessments are prohibited unless specifically approved by the district.
The district also plans to reduce its reliance on IXL, the online math and language-arts platform used for practice and student progress monitoring.
Taken together, the changes amount to a notable reversal after years in which laptops, learning platforms and other digital tools became increasingly embedded in the school day.
A State Mandate — and a Broader Philosophy
The cellphone restrictions implement New Jersey’s new bell-to-bell law, P.L. 2025, c. 195, along with guidance issued by the state Department of Education and Montclair’s existing policy governing privately owned technology.
Turner used her letter to make the case that the district’s rethink of technology goes beyond what Trenton requires.
“Technology has a place in learning, and it isn’t going anywhere,” she wrote. “Chromebooks will still support research, projects, assessments, and specialized coursework where they genuinely add value.”
She then pointed to classroom experiences the district hopes to emphasize as devices become less central to instruction.
“But we’ve also seen what gets crowded out when screens are the default rather than the exception: rich classroom discussion, the quiet focus of independent reading, the productive struggle of writing by hand, hands-on learning, and simple, unmediated conversation between students and teachers,” Turner wrote. “Those experiences build skills, including attention, patience, empathy, and resilience, that no app can teach. This year, we’re making more room for them.”
The policy includes exemptions for students whose circumstances require access to a device. Those may include needs documented in an Individualized Education Program, or IEP; a Section 504 plan; or an individual health plan. Exceptions may also be granted for translation services, documented caregiving responsibilities, emergencies, school-directed safety needs or circumstances covered by state or federal law.
Parents, guardians or students seeking an exemption must contact the building principal or appropriate student-support staff. The school will review the request and determine whether access is warranted and under what conditions.
One practical question has followed the policy debate since New Jersey began moving toward a statewide ban: how parents will reach their children during the school day.
Montclair’s answer is the one it has given since January, when the parent group Screen Aware Montclair began pressing for a bell-to-bell model: call the school’s main office.
The success of the new policy will also depend in part on what happens outside school, Turner suggested.
“This works best when home and school are pulling in the same direction,” she wrote, “when the expectations your child hears from us are echoed by what they hear from you.”
Montclair Joins a National Shift Away From Phones
Montclair’s move is part of a much larger retreat from student cellphone use in American schools.
Roughly 39 states and the District of Columbia now impose some form of school cellphone restriction, and more than half have adopted or required policies that extend through the full school day. New York and Virginia are among the states that have embraced versions of a bell-to-bell approach.
New Jersey also made grant funding available to help districts pay for locked phone pouches, storage systems and other costs associated with implementing the law. Montclair was not among the 86 districts awarded funding.
For a district already under significant financial pressure, Turner has argued that the distinction matters. In June, she described the cellphone requirement as an unfunded mandate that would add another expense to the district budget.
The more consequential question will take longer to answer: whether removing phones — and, in Montclair’s case, reducing classroom screen time more broadly — produces measurable changes in student attention, behavior or academic performance.
Early research offers a mixed but potentially instructive picture. A National Bureau of Economic Research study examining a large Florida school district found little change in test scores during the first year of a cellphone ban, followed by modest gains in the second year and a decline in unexcused absences.
The transition was not seamless. Suspensions increased by 25 percent during the first year of the policy, with the largest increase among Black students, before disciplinary rates moved closer to previous levels in the second year.
Public sentiment, meanwhile, appears to be moving toward stricter rules. A Pew Research survey conducted in June found that 48 percent of Americans supported banning cellphone use throughout the school day, up from 36 percent two years earlier.
Montclair will now conduct its own real-world test.
When students return, the most visible change may be the absence of phones in hallways and classrooms. But the district’s ambitions are broader: fewer screens, more writing by hand and a school day designed, at least in theory, to make it harder for students’ attention to be somewhere else.
You can read the full Technology Usage Plan here. For questions specific to your child’s building, including exceptions or how a confiscated device gets returned, contact your school’s main office directly.
Photo: Shuttersock
