‘It was so freeing’: How a cellphone ban is changing life at a Virginia high school

By Shoshana Dubnow and Pamela Brown, CNN

‍

Arlington, VirginiaCNN —

Greg Cabana, a veteran government teacher, remembers a time where his job as an educator felt secondary to being the phone police.

“It was absolutely every class period,” Cabana told CNN. “It wasn’t the question of if students would have their cell phones out, it was just a question of how much would they?”

This year, however, he’s no longer fighting that battle.

Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia is part of a pilot program for the district that launched in September 2024, requiring students to put their phones inside magnetic locking pouches every morning. At the end of the day, they use a specialized box to unlock them.

It comes after the state’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order last July requiring districts to move towards “phone-free education” in 2025. In that order, Youngkin wrote the move was meant to “promote a healthier and more focused educational environment.”

A rocky start

On the first days under the new policy, students were hesitant to part with their devices.

“When I walked into the cafeteria right after we got them, all you could hear is the banging. Everyone was banging their pouch,” Lucas Lopez, a junior at Wakefield, said.

Read the full article here.