In Marin’s Tamalpais Union High School District, the biggest campus drama right now is not onstage or on the field. It is playing out over smartphones, as trustees prepare to debate whether students should have to seal their phones away from first bell to final dismissal.
The board is slated to take up a tougher cellphone policy at its April 14 meeting, with the option to vote on it that same night. The proposal would move the district from its current class-by-class phone rules to a blanket, campuswide restriction that starts when students arrive and ends when they leave. That possible shift comes after months of public comment and internal surveys that show a community split along familiar lines: staff and many parents on one side, a vocal group of students on the other.
What trustees are weighing
Trustees are staring down two basic enforcement models. One is a “bell-to-bell” system where students place their phones in magnetically locking pouches that stay shut all school day. The other sticks with a narrower classroom approach where individual teachers collect phones at the start of each period.
According to prior cost estimates, rolling out pouches districtwide would run somewhere between $135,000 and $160,000 up front, with another $20,000 to $30,000 a year to cover supplies and unlocking equipment. Trustees have asked for more detail on how such a system would be rolled out, who would manage the logistics, and what happens when something goes wrong…