ATLANTA – Schools across Georgia will have to figure out how to pry cellphones from students’ hands next year now that a new ban will be taking effect.
House Bill 340 prohibits personal communications devices in public school classrooms from kindergarten through eighth grade.
The ban goes into effect in the summer of 2026. Gov. Brian Kemp signed the legislation last week after it passed the Georgia General Assembly with broad bipartisan support earlier this year.
A handful of school systems have already implemented local bans, including Marietta City Schools.
Marietta Superintendent Grant Rivera was among the leading proponents for a statewide ban, telling lawmakers in March that he’d seen dramatic changes in middle school, where students were talking with each other rather than hunching over screens.
“It impacts academics, it impacts their well-being, it impacts their relationships,” Rivera said at a legislative hearing. He said disciplinary issues were down, as well.
School districts have until January to write policies and procedures for locking up students’ phones from the first bell in the morning to the last one in the afternoon.
They must implement those policies by July 1, 2026, with hundreds of thousands of students affected when school starts that fall.
School leaders welcome the legislation. John Zauner, executive director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association, called the ban a well-meaning attempt to remove a major distraction during the school day.
“Cellphones in the hands of youngsters are definitely a distraction,” he said.
Fulton County School System, one of the largest school districts in Georgia, is already preparing.
“These new restrictions were already planned for the upcoming school year, and the new law affirms the direction we were taking to reduce distractions and strengthen student learning,” a district spokesman said. School board members will vote on the new policy in June. It not only would ban use during the school day through eighth grade, but also would prohibit use in high schools during instructional time.
While the idea of a statewide ban is popular, some have expressed concern about being unable to reach their children during an emergency, such as a school shooting.
That’s why the bill’s chief co-sponsor, Rep. Scott Hilton, R-Peachtree Corners, didn’t push for a ban in high schools. But he and others expect the K-8 ban to spread to high schools in the future, after middle school students and their parents become accustomed to it.
Hilton said in an interview Monday that high school is more complicated, and it will take time to study implementation there and to develop a cellphone-free culture.
“I think this bill begins an important conversation that’s going to lead to a cellphone-free environment in grades 9 through 12,” he said.
That culture is deeply embedded. Hilton said that when Kemp signed HB 340 on Friday, lawmakers instinctively pulled out their smartphones to capture the moment. And Hilton said that when he was presenting his bill on the floor of the House of Representatives, his colleagues couldn’t resist the moment.
“My phone starts to light up,” he said. “People are calling, texting — and it’s my colleagues in the House having fun with me. It was distracting.”