BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) – A new state law will impact Kentucky students’ school day and how they will communicate with parents during that time.
House Bill 280 requires school boards to adopt a policy restricting cell phone and social media use during the school day.
The goal of the bill is to take pressure off the local school boards by creating a law that would create one policy on cell phone use in classrooms everyone can follow.
“There’s 171 different school districts across the state and you know, we had 171 different policies in regard to cell phones and technology use in schools, and we decided that we would try to come up with one policy and ask every school district to abide by that one policy,” said Kevin Jackson, a state representative from Bowling Green.
Jackson said lawmakers heard lots of testimony during the process of getting House Bill 208 passed, which explained how much of a distraction cell phones were in classrooms.
“We heard from administrators, we heard from teachers, we even heard from some students how it was distracting in the classroom,” Jackson said. “So, you know, I don’t think this came from just one particular area of education. It came from everybody.”
There are exceptions to the policy, including when there’s an emergency, or when a teacher allows the students to use them as part of a lesson.
“You know, there is a time and place for things, especially with AI coming about, there’s a time and place that maybe a teacher would say, ‘Hey, get your phone out or your electronic device out and look up this or that,’” Jackson said.
Jackson said the issue of cell phones in school is something that got greater over time, and the COVID-19 pandemic and mental health played a role.
“I know as a former school administrator, a lot of our daily discipline things where we were dealing with bullying or threatening and so forth that took place away from school, but we had to deal with it at school when it was brought to our attention,” said Jackson. “So I think it’s a combination of those things that has brought all of this to a head.”
According to Jackson, the Kentucky Board of Education oversees how schools are following this new state law.
The new law also requires schools to make social media inaccessible or prohibited through school technology, unless a teacher allows it for instructional purposes.
“We hear those horror stories again where students go to the library or the computer lab and get on a computer and go to websites that are not appropriate before, and we want to make sure that, again, we’re all about education during the school day and not about distractions and especially illicit things that may occur in schools,” Jackson said. “We want to make sure that they do not have the opportunity to do those things.”
Before this new law went into effect, some local schools already had a policy limiting or prohibiting cell phones in the classroom.
For example, Adair County Middle School added a “No Cell Phone” policy in July 2024. School officials said the reason was due to the negative impact phones had on students’ focus, productivity and overall academic performance.
Allen County Scottsville High School also adopted a cell phone policy for the 2024-2025 school year. According to the student handbook, cell phones and personal devices such as AirPods, headphones and gaming devices were not allowed in the classroom. Students would also place their cel phones and personal devices in an assigned location within the classroom.
Other local schools’ policies range from students allowed to have phones on them but not use them to phones being in lockers or backpacks during class time.
Another state law that went into effect this summer is Senate Bill 73, which not only makes sextortion a felony in Kentucky, but also requires school districts to provide information about it. Jackson said the goal with both laws is to protect kids.
“There’s no 100% foolproof method that you can use, but we want to try to take advantage of any opportunity that we can, and we feel like some of the bills that we passed last session hopefully will help take care of some of those issues and limit the number of students that are involved with whether it’s sextortion, whether it’s bullying, whether it’s mental health issues, whatever it is.”
Jackson added these concerns didn’t pop up on lawmakers’ radar this year, that they’ve been talking about this for a few years. He hopes the new law will help students go back to concentrating on education.
“There’s not one thing that’s going to straighten all this out. There’s not one thing that’s going to prevent all of this stuff from happening because we know kids are going to be on their phones at home and, you know, after work or whenever it is. But we’re going to try to do our part in limiting these types of actions at school.”
Cell phone policies can be found in the school’s student handbook.
Copyright 2025 WBKO. All rights reserved.
