North Carolina schools are settling into a statewide rule that phones stay off and away during class. One North Carolina school got a two-year head start, and its experience is a useful preview of what the transition actually looks like.
IC Imagine, a public charter school in Asheville enrolling about 1,240 students, began requiring students to store phones before class roughly two years ago, well before the state law arrived. "Parents have told us their kids are coming home happier and more talkative," said Jenn Townley, the school's head of school.
What the law requires
House Bill 959 took effect Jan. 1, 2026. It requires every public and charter school in the state to adopt a policy barring students from using, displaying, or keeping wireless devices turned on during instructional time. The exceptions are narrow but real: emergencies, documented medical needs, requirements written into a student's individualized education program, and use a teacher approves for a lesson.
The law covers instructional time, not the entire school day. At IC Imagine, high school students still get their phones between classes and at lunch. "The goal is not to eliminate phones entirely," Townley said, but to cut distraction during learning. Rep. Hugh Blackwell, one of the bill's sponsors, said in a statement that the aim is better focus and engagement, leading to stronger academic performance.
What actually happens in practice
Most students comply, Townley said while some do not.
"We also have students who have special cellphones to turn in, so that they're turning in a cellphone and then actually keep their own cellphone in their pocket," she said. "And that becomes a disciplinary issue for us." The decoy phone is the kind of detail that rarely makes it into policy debates but shapes how enforcement actually goes, and it is worth knowing about before a school assumes a storage pouch solves the problem.
Her advice to other school leaders is about systems rather than punishment: put clear procedures in place, back up teachers who have to enforce them, and communicate with families so parents support the decision rather than undermine it. "More people playing on the same team makes things smoother," she said.
Parents are frequently the reason a phone stays on, since many want to be able to reach their child during the day, and a policy that surprises families tends to generate more conflict than one explained in advance.
The broader case for restrictions rests partly on adolescent mental health. The World Health Organization has reported that more than one in 10 adolescents shows signs of problematic social media behavior, meaning difficulty controlling use and experiencing negative consequences from it.
North Carolina joins a growing list of states and large districts tightening rules on student devices, though the approaches differ widely. Some target only phones during class, as North Carolina does, while Los Angeles has gone further and begun limiting overall screen time for more than 400,000 students. The underlying disagreement is far from settled, as our look at whether phones should be banned in schools lays out.
Sources
WLOS: North Carolina charter school talks benefits of cellphone restrictions for students
School enrollment figures from allk12's analysis of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, 2024-25.
