BEND, Ore. — Parents are reacting to Gov. Tina Kotek’s executive order banning cell phone use in all Oregon public schools, with no universal agreement. The order requires school districts to come up with their own policies banning the devices by the middle of the 2025-26 school year.
“I think it’s fantastic. I think it’s a really healthy choice to make for the kids,” parent Nick Wright said.
The order goes beyond phones. It covers all personal electronic devices capable of receiving and sending messages, such as smart watches.
“I am a little concerned how to communicate. My daughter only has a watch right now. I would want to be able to communicate with her on her watch if she needs me, but overall I was pretty stoked to see the news,” parent Tamara Moshofsky said.
Others in the community are completely against it.
“I’m very much against it. Most people should, because it should be between parents and school boards. The government doing it is taking it out of everybody’s hands. That’s taking everyone’s authority. Maybe the parent wants their kid to have an emergency number. Maybe the kid is disciplined enough to only use it in an emergency,” Bend local J. Smith said.
A major argument for parents who are against the ban, would be their inability to reach their children in an emergency. But some say the ban will actually help improve communication and prevent false information from reaching social media.
“A lot of the time, there’s miscommunication with so many mobile devices. They often send too many messages to too many places. The teachers know who to talk to, where to take the kids, it’s all very streamlined,” Wright said.
Even Amanda Renggli, who was 15 when she survived the 1998 mass shooting at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, supports the ban.
“I fully support the cell phone ban, speaking from my experience as a survivor of a mass school shooting. I was 15 years old at Thurston High School on May 21, 1998. As young kids, our brains aren’t fully developed to process the overwhelming exposure to fear, misinformation, and real-time panic that cell phones and the internet can amplify during a crisis,” Renggli said.
Kip Kinkel opened fire in the school’s cafeteria, killing two of Renggli’s classmates and wounding 25 others.
“In my experience, phones in school didn’t make us safer — they made us more anxious, more distracted and more vulnerable to misinformation in the middle of emergencies,” Renggli said. “The biggest pushback I hear against the cell phone ban usually comes from a place of fear, particularly concerns about communication during a mass shooting. Most parents say it’s about tracking their child. But today, there are more effective and less disruptive ways to do that — like Apple AirTags or other GPS devices.”
There are also concerns that the devices are a distraction.
“The idea of the policy isn’t bad, it’s about how it’s implemented,” Smith said. “If it’s between the parents and the school board, then the parents have some control. Kids don’t necessarily need a cell phone unless it is an emergency.”
Moshofsky would like to see the school districts implement several points of contact with school staff, if she can’t communicate with her child.
“Maybe having a point of contact per time of day. So, if they’re in a certain class, this is the number you need to call. If they’re in a different class, this is the number you need to call. I have a hard time believing that having one administrative number is gonna be enough,” Moshofsky said.
There are exemptions in the executive order that allow students to use their phones if they have a medical condition that is treated with the help of the device.
School districts must have their policies drafted by October 31 and fully implemented by January 1, 2026.
