Georgia school shooting highlights fears about classroom cellphone bans

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As students at Appalachian High School huddled in classrooms for safety as gunfire rang out, they texted or called their parents to let them know what was happening and send what they thought might be their last messages. One student texted her mother to say she loved her, adding, “I’m sorry I’m not the best daughter.”

The Georgia school shooting that killed four people and wounded nine others last week was every parent’s worst nightmare, highlighting the potential downsides of efforts by states, school districts and federal lawmakers to ban or restrict access to cellphones in classrooms.

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The move to restrict phone use in schools has been prompted by concerns about the impact of screen time on children’s mental health, as well as complaints from teachers that cellphones have become a constant distraction in the classroom. But opponents of the ban say it cuts off a lifeline parents need to ensure their children’s safety during school shootings or other emergencies.

“The reality is that parents and families can’t count on schools to communicate with us effectively in times of emergency, and this has happened time and time again,” says Kerry Rodriguez, president of the National Parents Alliance, an education advocacy group. “There are a whole host of reasons why parents are very concerned about whether they will get timely information about whether their children are safe.”

Nationally, 77 percent of schools in the United States say they ban cellphone use in school for nonacademic purposes, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But that number is misleading. It doesn’t mean that students are following these bans or that all schools are enforcing them.

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These restrictions have been promoted by both Republican and Democratic governors, who rarely agree on other issues.

In Arkansas, Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders launched a program for school districts to apply for grants to buy bags for students to keep their phones in during the school day. In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has urged school districts to restrict cellphone use and is considering whether to sign legislation that would require schools to impose restrictions.

“I feel very sorry that another school shooting is the reason we bring televisions into the classroom and then disrupt our children’s education,” Newsom said Friday. “Because that’s essentially what a cell phone is — bringing a television into the classroom and disrupting the ability to have quality academic time.”

But for many of the students who were victims of the Appalachian shooting, access to their phones was the only way they could communicate with loved ones during moments they feared might be their last.

“I love you. I love you so much. Mommy I love you,” Julie Sandoval, the youngest daughter, texted her mother. “I’m sorry I’m not the best daughter. I love you.”

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Another student was talking on the phone to his mother nearby, Sandoval said: “They’re shooting in the school! They’re shooting in the school!”

But advocates of restrictions on phone use in schools warn that allowing access to phones during shootings or other emergencies could put students at greater risk.

“The most important thing to me is their safety,” said Kim Whitman, co-founder of the Phone-Free Schools movement, a group that advocates for schools to adopt policies that ban cellphones and keep them away from students. “If my child is on the phone and not getting the teacher’s guidance because they were on their phone and not safe, that’s a worse scenario in my opinion.”

Whitman said she understands the concerns about keeping parents informed, which is why a key part of any phone-free school is being proactive about communicating about emergencies.

Balancing safety and parental concerns was the guide behind the cellphone ban at Grand Island High School, Nebraska’s largest high school, which introduced a new policy in January requiring students to keep phones out of sight and in their bags or pockets, and to keep them silent or turned off during school hours.

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“One of the primary questions parents asked us was, ‘What if Sally or Johnny didn’t have their phone if, God forbid, there was an active shooter or some kind of crisis in the building?’” said Jeff Gilbertson, then the school’s principal who now runs leadership training for the state Board of Education.

But the school is training students on lockdown procedures to remind them of the dangers phones can cause during emergencies.

“We train our kids to keep their phones off. We don’t want to be talking on the phone during lockdown, because that would give away our location to an active shooter,” he said.

Students in other school shootings have used cellphones to alert authorities or their parents. During the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 21 people, a fourth-grader pleaded for help in a series of 911 calls. Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, sent terrifying videos to parents during the 2018 shooting that killed 17 people.

The Appalachian high school shooting was a painful reminder to Brandi Sayer of why she bought a cell phone for her daughter, now a high school sophomore in Broward County, Fla. Both of her children attended schools near Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School at the time of the mass shooting.

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Scarry’s son’s school was closed, and she thought it was a training exercise until she texted him on his phone. Scarry bought her daughter a cell phone the following year for this reason.

Broward County Schools now requires students to keep their phones turned off and on airplane mode, but Sayer told her daughter to keep her phone on and with her.

“It’s not about me texting my daughter during regular school or anything like that,” Sayer said. “It’s a security measure and I’m sorry, I can’t ignore that.”

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This story has been updated to correct that the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting happened in 2022, not 2020.

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Associated Press writers Jeff Amy in Winder, Georgia, Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California, and Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco contributed to this report.

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