Colorado schools roll out stricter cellphone bans ahead of state deadline

From locked pouches to bell-to-bell bans, Colorado schools are cracking down on cellphone use in the classroom as districts prepare to comply with a new state law by July 1.

House Bill 1135, also known as the Communication Devices in School bill, was passed in 2025 as an attempt to remove classroom distractions that were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill was also pitched as a pathway to mitigating negative mental health impacts from excessive screen time and social media use.

Sponsored by Rep. Meghan Lukens, a Steamboat Springs Democrat, the bill gave school districts until July 1, 2026, to develop and post individual policies on their website regarding cellphone use during school hours, with exemptions for students with disabilities or medical needs. 

So far, survey data shows elementary and middle schools are ahead of the curve in adopting a variety of cellphone policies — high schools, not so much.

“If you fast forward to the modern environment of a student in a Colorado school, there is a conflict between doing schoolwork and, for example, checking TikTok,” said Angela Duckworth, a psychologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, at the May 13 Colorado Board of Education meeting.

Cellphone use has notable impacts on academic performance. A nationwide study conducted by Duckworth showed that eighth graders who exhibited more self control with device usage received higher grades than those who didn’t. 

One of the survey questions asked students where they put their phones when studying for a big test. Answers ranged from having the cellphone next to them with the sound on, to setting it on silent and leaving it in another room.

“When you match this simple question to report card grades from school transcripts in one of the 10 largest school districts in America, it’s a very simple result. The farther the phone, the higher the GPA,” Duckworth said. “In other words, it’s easier for students to resist the temptation of their phone if it’s physically farther away.” 

When implementing this practice in classrooms, students were better able to achieve their academic goals as early as one week later, Duckworth’s research showed. Post-2020, school distractions caused by cellphones have had more notable impacts on student behavior and performance.

Colorado school districts implement stricter phone policies

Duckworth leads Phones in Focus, a national study of school phone policies drawing on responses from more than 110,000 educators across the U.S. While it is still collecting responses through the rest of the school year, early results show that Colorado schools are implementing stricter cellphone policies heading into the end of the 2025-26 school year.

Colorado ranks eighth in the country for participation in the study, with 3,545 educators from 46% of schools submitting responses. Based on the preliminary results, school districts have a wide variety of policies around when and where students can have phones.

Roughly 89% of surveyed elementary schools in Colorado have implemented bell-to-bell cellphone policies as of spring 2026, with 3% adopting schedule-based restrictions where students can only use their phones during lunch or passing periods. Bell-to-bell restrictions drop to 84% for middle schools and 22% for high schools in the state. Responses indicated that almost 20% of Colorado high schools currently have no school-wide restrictions on cellphone use.

“There’s a paradox here, because when you look at data from the National Education Association, it’s in high school that the teachers say that cellphones become a real problem, but it’s in Colorado high schools that you have the most relaxed policies,” Duckworth said.

In terms of where students are allowed to keep their phones, some policies ban cellphones on campus altogether, while others conduct classroom collections or allow students to keep phones in pouches or lockers. Duckworth said full cellphone bans on school campuses are rare, but it’s becoming more popular to use Yondr pouches to lock devices away for the day.

Yondr pouches are specialized, magnetically locked fabric bags used to secure smartphones. While initially marketed for live entertainment venues, the pouches started being used to reduce cellphone use in the classroom around 2021.

Roughly 55% of high schools in Colorado have opted to implement a “no show” policy in place of more strict alternatives. A “no show” policy means students may bring their phone anywhere while at school, but they can’t be out and visible.

“I will tell you as a psychologist that you’re allowing your students to keep their phones in their back pockets,” Duckworth said. “No show is ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ which means it allows students to keep their temptations very close to them which makes it harder to resist.”

The data also shows that school districts became stricter on their cellphone policies between spring 2025 and spring 2026, as Colorado approaches the July 1 deadline.

“Things are moving very quickly in the state,” said Lisa Escárcega, a board member with the Colorado Board of Education, during a May 13 presentation of the preliminary results. “The state’s largest school district … has been proposed to do a bell-to-bell cellphone ban, so the data is already very old. As districts continue to move in this direction, I think it’ll be interesting to see what the final numbers are.”

Data from the study also shows that schools with stricter cellphone policies report higher satisfaction from teachers. Over 70% of teachers from schools with bell-to-bell bans said they were satisfied with the policy, while satisfaction was closer to 50% for schedule-based restrictions and 26% for no restrictions.

Concerns over enforcement, parent access

As school districts prepare to comply with the requirements of House Bill 1135, the focus will shift from implementation to enforcement.

“People will (say), ‘Wait, if it’s a bell-to-bell school, how can there be more than 0% of kids on their phones?'” Duckworth said. “It’s about enforcement. … Sometimes that’s what state boards get wrong, they think about the letter of the law, they don’t think about the enforcement of the law.”

According to teachers in schools with campus-wide bans, stricter policies are often enforced more consistently than leaner policies.

“When schools have implemented this, there’s more talk in the hallway, more activity at lunchtime as opposed to (seeing) heads down,” said Colorado Commissioner of Education Susana Córdova.

House Bill 1135 initially received some pushback from parents who were concerned about being able to reach their children during an emergency. For many educators, the risks of not addressing excessive cellphone use could present more damaging consequences.

“Parents need to fully understand the risk of having a child who has constant access (to their cellphone),” said Colorado Board of Education member Steve Durham. “There’s no comparison in the risk of the child that is addicted to the device; that risk is much greater over time than any risk that is involved with loss of communication at school.”