Governor Kim Reynolds has called for a statewide cell phone policy for Iowa schools and will unveil the details of her proposal next Tuesday.
House Speaker Pat Grassley said lawmakers are most likely to establish “a uniform, minimum standard” focused on “instructional time” — when students are in class. “To not overstep into the local control of it,” Grassley told Radio Iowa, “but also make sure schools know we have an expectation of them having some level of policy.”
Incoming Senate Education Committee chairman Lynn Evans, a Republican from Aurelia, said there are concerns about the impact cell phone use is having on academic achievement. “There was a Rutgers-New Brunswick study that was published in the Journal of Education Psychology that found similar results,” Evans said, “that cell phones and other electronic devices have a negative effect on the individual’s test scores as well as the learning environment in the classroom itself.”
But Evans, who is a retired superintendent, said he doesn’t want to interfere with Iowa schools that have taken the initiative to establish policies for the use of cell phones, tablets and other electronic devices during school hours. “Even school districts that are adjacent to each other and share a border, their cultures are different. The needs of their students are different,” Evans said, “so that’s why I’d like to allow some flexibility for each board to address it in a manner that works best for their school.”
House Education Committee chairman Skyler Wheeler of Hull said he’s open to reviewing what the governor may propose, but his local superintendents are telling him they want to retain the ability to adopt policies that best fit their own school districts. “My kind of inkling is schools are starting to create policies and we just kind of let the schools operate that way. Like I said, I’ll be open to whatever the governor has that she wants put forward, but I think you have a lot of different factors going on here,” Wheeler said. “Different schools obviously serve different communities and different people and parents are probably going to think one way over here and maybe differently over there and they may have different input, as well as the teachers and the students.”
House Democratic Leader Jennifer Konfrst also suggested there is a limit to how far the legislature should go in setting a statewide policy on cell phone use in schools. “We want to make sure that we’re not putting more work on teachers, that this just doesn’t become one more thing we’re asking educators to do,” Konfrst said. “Let’s let school districts decide what’s best for implementing the policies in their own districts.”
Senate Democratic Leader Janice Weiner said there is wide agreement something should be done to curb cell phone use in schools, but she indicated it’s too early to say the governor’s proposal will become law. “Will it be sort of a basic floor that says: ‘You have to do at least this much and anything else you want to do is fine.’ I would imagine that we would probably be fine with that,” Weiner said. “Or would it be more prescriptive?”
Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver told Radio Iowa Senate Republicans “are happy to work with the governor” on the issue, but haven’t come to consensus yet on what cell phone restrictions the legislature should adopt for Iowa schools.
The 2025 legislative session begins Monday. On Tuesday, Governor Reynolds will deliver the annual Condition of the State address and will reveal her 2025 legislative agenda.