DeKalb Schools wrap up a ‘successful’ first year of cellphone ban program

DeKalb County School District Administration and Industrial Complex on Mountain Industrial Blvd. in Stone Mountain. (Dean Hesse/Decaturish)

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — The DeKalb County School District in 2024 became one of the first in Georgia to address smartphone use by students, and district officials say the effort has yielded positive results. 

In July 2024, a pilot program called Disconnect to Reconnect was implemented across 18 schools in DCSD. According to Director of Student Relations Darnell Logan, those schools have seen a 17% decrease in student discipline since its implementation.

After hearing teachers’ concerns that cellphone use in classrooms was causing distractions and less engagement, Logan and district staff members initiated the program.

“We added Disconnect to Reconnect to give teachers another resource to help support us and help combat students using their phones during the day, on social media, distracted from instruction,” Logan said.



Logan began working on the idea after reflecting on how his family is affected by excessive screen time. 

“I’m sure you have sat down, watched a movie, pulled out your phone, scrolled, and then had to rewind it because you missed something,” Logan said. “Just imagine that’s happening in classrooms consistently with students, they’re missing chunks of information.”

While the district is not the first in the state to implement this type of program, it is the largest, with 12,000 students involved, according to Logan.

The new pilot program included 10 schools that provided and required individual locking Yondr pouches for each student. The other eight schools required students to lock their cellphones in lockers.

Exceptions were made for devices required under a student’s Individualized Education Program, Section 504, or medical plan.

“We are not here to take away cellphones to punish students. We have identified that there are concerns with students being disengaged from learning, so our ultimate focus is to put the emphasis back on student engagement,” Logan said.

When the school year began, schools began warning communities about the upcoming change by posting on social media and holding parent discussions on student cellphone usage.

Despite the alerts, Logan said making the shift was still “extremely challenging” for some students during the first week. The district had social workers and counselors prepared to talk with students facing anxiety or concern from being detached from their phones.

Lakeside High School Principal Dr. Susan Stoddard said that during the first week, teachers and staff also placed conversation starters at the lunch tables, knowing that students might need help socializing without phones.

“We had sentence starters, little conversation starters that we put out on the tables in the lunchroom because we worried about ‘what are they going to do?’ and ‘how are we going to help them interact?’” Stoddard said.

Not all students complied with the rule during the school year and chose to hide their phones in their bags. According to Stoddard, around 10 to 15% of students also didn’t bring a phone to school.

Some parents also shared concerns about students having less of a connection in case of emergencies.

Despite the initial apprehensiveness among students, many, including Lakeside High senior Troy Butler, grew fond of the ban after realizing their and many of their peers’ “phone addiction.” 

“Everybody was starting to stop being as addicted to their phones and especially me,” Butler said. “I didn’t even think I was addicted, but I was still checking my pocket and in my bag to see my phone.”

After spending his first three years of school watching videos on his phone at lunch, Butler noticed a stark social change once the program went into effect and made many new friends.

Logan noted a difference between pilot program schools and other schools in the district. 

“In our pilot schools, when I walk in the cafeterias, I see students talking to each other. Students are having conversations,” Logan said. “When I go to some of our other schools that are not pilot, I see students more disengaged, on their phones and not really paying attention.”

Stoddard, the Lakeside High principal, said the hallways sounded “joyous” this year compared to prior years.

“It was just school again,” Stoddard said. “You could just hear the students laughing and talking to each other: ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ Calling out those sounds that you want in your hallways.”

Butler, who is graduating this month, credits the pilot program for helping him have a good senior year experience and said that it impacted him outside the learning space as well. After giving back the pouches at the end of the program, he also noticed a potential effect.

“We had a few days in between where there were no pouches for phones. I looked around and I didn’t see a single phone… everybody was talking, which wasn’t how it used to be,” Butler said.

Along with exceeding their goal with a 17% decrease in student discipline, Logan said that teachers in the program have reported increased engagement, fewer instructional disruptions, improved task completion, higher participation rates and less “social media-fueled” conflicts.

Ahead of the curve

DeKalb Schools is ahead of the state in addressing school cellphone use.

Gov. Brian Kemp signed House Bill 340, the Distraction-Free Education Act, into state law on May 9. This bill bans personal electronic devices in schools from kindergarten to eighth grade and will go into effect by July 2026.

With graduations ongoing, the district is evaluating data collected from pilot program schools to plan accordingly for next year. Logan said he is taking into account any changes in the program implementation that the state may require in the future.

“The information that we have gathered during this program is going to assist us as we move forward and put additional procedures and processes in place that are consistent with what the state is doing,” Logan said. “We have learned a wealth of information doing this pilot.”

The DCSD school board will receive an update on the pilot program data’s results during their June 9 meeting. While Logan said the program will continue, it is still not known to what extent it will be implemented in the future.

This story was provided by WABE content partner Decaturish.