“Bell to bell, no cell,” Robert Ceh, principal of Seneca Valley Senior High School, calls it, according to Tracy Vitale, district superintendent.

Starting this school year, Seneca Valley School District classrooms, which educate over 7,600 students, are phone-free zones from the first bell to the last.

“Our main ‘why,’ going back four years ago was we were concerned with the rise in mental health issues,” Vitale said.

The first drastic change was made during the 2023-24 school year, after surveying parents and staff, meeting with stakeholder groups and conducting research and data gathering.

“As a result of that, our school board tightened the policy on cellphone use in schools,” Vitale said.

The district began setting limits on phone use during the school day, but students were still allowed to use phones for instructional purposes or in between classes.

“Each teacher had their own process to monitor this and kids were very respectful,” Vitale said.

However, the teaching staff found usage did not drop significantly overall, after taking study hall hours, lunch time, bus rides and free time in between classes into consideration.

“It was pretty prevalent,” Vitale said of phone use after the previous policy change.

In 2024, the school board approached Vitale and proposed tightening the cellphone policy further. While cellphones are still allowed on buses, students must now put them away for the school day. Students can have phones with them but the staff should not see or hear them. The policy also applies to airpods and smartwatches.

“Thinking further upstream instead of downstream, we need to think more diligently about how these phones are impacting these kids’ mental health, especially when it comes to social media, group texts and bullying online,” Vitale said.

The board last revised the cellphone policy June 9 and notified parents about the change later in the same month.

As per the new policy, the first instance of a violation will lead to the device being sent to the main office for the student to pick it up at end of day, and parents will be called.

If there is a second instance, in addition to the device being sent to the main office, students will have to review the policy with the principal.

A third incident will result in the device being sent to the main office, but it will be the parents who will have to come pick it up at the end of day, Vitale said.

So far, coming off the first few days of school, Vitale said she is happy with results of the new policy. She said she is surprised to see students’ faces, who usually have their heads down, and has noticed students interacting with each other more and even playing games like paper football to spend time between classes.

Vitale said that cognitively, children are wired to play and playing is good to build social skills, which many fell behind in due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Shaping up students’ social skills is one of the end goals of the new policy, along with improving students’ critical thinking and attention spans, which are all important toward solving mental health problems.

“I know it’s going to be a long road. I’m not naive (to the fact) that this will be a constant battle, but today was not a battle,” Vitale said about the first day of school.

One student sitting by herself told Vitale she did not like the new policy, because she did not know what to do. Vitale said she at times felt the same way, since the staff also has to adhere to this new policy.

“We’re in this together,” Vitale told the student. “We’re accountable to each other.”

One of the district’s goals is to respect students’ ability to be responsible and approach it more from an education standpoint rather than treating it as some sort of a punishment. The district would rather emphasize the mental health benefits, Vitale said.

The school district had considered lockable, Yondr pouches to hold the phones. The school principals visited some districts that used them, but decided they did not need to take measures that drastic, at least for the moment.

“The principals said, ‘we have good, compliant children — we think we can do this without the pouches,’” Vitale said. “There may still be a reason to do that later in the year, but instead we put together a plan first with a change in policy.”

Vitale said she only got two parent complaints, one concerning special education and another about safety. For the latter, parents were told to contact their school’s main office in case of emergency.

Vitale said she already feels better herself not using her phone all the time.

“If I feel better on Day One, I hope over time students will feel better,” Vitale said. “I feel like today, we got our kids back.”

The school district is still big on technology, Vitale said, but in a way the schools can better monitor and manage what technology is used for. For instance, the schools still issues laptops to students for instructional use, but the schools can control those devices better.

“We’re still a very big digital district, we’ve just tightened up the personal device usage,” Vitale said.

The revised policy manual states that while the board recognizes the importance of technology in education, “this policy aims to ensure a productive learning environment while emphasizing use of technology through the teaching of digital citizenship at every grade level.”

“We’re trying to build resiliency, self-control and emotional regulation for all of us,” Vitale said.