Crystal Schreck is a Falmouth parent and co-founder of the group Falmouth Alliance for Thoughtful Technology and the Turn the Tide Coalition, which seeks to unite Maine school districts in the thoughtful implementation of technology.

This month in Augusta, Republicans on the Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs argued that Maine school districts have not been given enough time to develop their own policies to control cellphone use on campus, and therefore they cannot support the initiative proposed by Gov. Mills. 

The truth is districts have already had at least seven years.

In 2019, Maine Rep. Heidi Sampson, R-Alfred, introduced LD 965, a bill that would have restricted student cellphone use during the school day. The committee recommended against it, and the House ultimately voted it down. Notably, many of the lawmakers who supported moving the bill forward were Republicans.

Four years prior to this, in 2015, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio reversed a policy that was implemented by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2006, citing parent pushback around safety concerns and inequitable enforcement as the primary drivers of the decision. In the span of a few years, a policy designed to protect the learning environment was recast as an unreasonable intrusion on student and parental rights.

Current New York state Gov. Kathy Hochul is forging a different path — not by shrugging off the issue, but by confronting it head‑on. In 2025, she led New York to become the largest state in the nation to adopt statewide, bell‑to‑bell restrictions on smartphone use in K‑12 schools, backed by funding and a framework that allows districts to enforce distraction‑free learning while still accommodating communication and student needs. This time, New York recognized the change was long overdue — and acted on it.

Today in Maine, lawmakers are still debating partisan disagreements over a policy that should not be partisan at all. Other states get it. Roughly 26 of them have implemented bell-to-bell restrictions, the only research-supported model for reducing distractions and improving classroom focus. The best among these policies, have clear guidelines that phones are inaccessible to students, rather than simply “off and away.”

And at least a dozen more have legislation in process. The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, chaired by Republican Ted Cruz, recently held a hearing about children’s screen time, where legislators from both sides of the aisle agreed that phones do not belong in schools.

But how do we know a bell-to-bell policy will be effective in Maine? We need not look further than our own district in Bath, where Assistant Superintendent Katie Joseph pioneered this approach in 2024. Morse High School implemented the policy in about three months and Principal Eric Varney has since reported, “I’ve had teachers in the business for 40 years say this is the best policy change they’ve seen.” And last year, Portland followed suit and school board chair Sarah Lentz shared that “many teachers and administrators have seen fewer distractions and more student engagement since the policy took effect.” 

I realize people are tired of talking about cellphones in schools. For the members of Turn the Tide — a coalition of parents, educators and experts — this conversation has been ongoing for two years. When our efforts began, only a handful of parent groups and exhausted teachers were sounding the alarm, many of them after reading “The Anxious Generation” and putting words to what they were already seeing in their schools.

At the time, the issue was largely overlooked by policymakers. That was before declining academic performance, rising student anxiety and disengagement in classrooms made the consequences harder to ignore.

Now members of the Education Committee are suggesting that we just haven’t given districts enough time. I could make the argument that seven years is plenty of time, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll agree. Maybe we haven’t given districts enough time. But the reality is that the Legislature has already given districts a more difficult task through the passage of LD 1234: not to reduce phone use, but simply to write a policy about it.

By converting what began as a bell-to-bell restrictive policy into a requirement that districts write their own policies, lawmakers traded clarity for ambiguity, and leadership for abdication of responsibility. Instead of establishing a consistent standard across Maine schools, they placed the burden back on local boards to reinvent solutions that many districts have already been struggling to enforce for years. In doing so, the Legislature didn’t solve the problem — it just postponed it. Meanwhile, teachers are still left managing the same distraction in their classrooms every day.

Looking back, it’s hard not to conclude that Sampson and Bloomberg were right. And now we’re left shaking our heads with regret that we didn’t intervene years ago. Yet the debate continues to stall over a $700,000 fiscal note — an argument about cost that feels increasingly disconnected from the scale of the problem facing Maine’s students.

Meanwhile, our state is paying out $12 million for the Learning Through Technology program, implementing more technology (not more thoughtfully, just in volume) in our K-12 classrooms.

Make it make sense.

The good news is that we no longer have to guess what works. From Bath to Portland — and from Florida to California — schools that have restricted cellphone use are reporting improvements in classroom focus, student engagement and school culture. Educators and researchers alike are documenting the benefits and urging policymakers to act.

The question is no longer whether phone-free schools are possible. The question is whether we have the will to implement what the evidence already shows is effective. Maine’s students deserve policies guided by evidence and matched with urgency — not another round of partisan politics while our kids pay the price.