ELGIN — Tessa Kuhn is a senior at Elgin High School – and she needs her cellphone. Kuhn, 17, said the new law that completely restricts cellphones for public school students is unfair and must be changed.
“It’s a big problem if the weather turns bad or there is some type of incident on campus,” she said.
Earlier this year, state lawmakers passed legislation to curb student cellphone use while students are in school.
Senate Bill 139, which was passed into law in the last legislative session, requires Oklahoma public schools create a policy prohibiting cellphone use for the whole school day during the 20252026 school year. The cellphone ban becomes optional for school districts for the 2026-2027 school year and afterwards.
Kuhn isn’t a fan of the legislation.
“I think it needs to change,” she said. “It’s too restrictive.”
State Sen. Spencer Kern, R-Duncan, said he was initially hesitant about the Legislature enacting the ban. He said many small schools in his district already had effected no-cellphone policies.
“But I think ultimately, once it was in place, even though there was some initial pushback, I think it strengthened the policies that they already had in place,” Kern said. “I think it gave those policies a little more backbone for those superintendents, perhaps, who needed that little bit of support to go ahead and push that through and have something to stand on.”
According to its website, Lawton Public Schools approved a no-cellphone policy on June 9, after the legislation was signed by the governor.
Today, Lawton students must place their smart electronic devices into Faraday or Yondr bags. The bags block wireless signals from the devices “from bell-to-bell” or from the start of the school day to the end.
Students are supposed to power off their devices, place them in the bags and leave them in their backpacks or lockers. The bags are only being used by students in grades 6-12. Pre-K through fifth grade students are still prohibited from using any personal smart devices during the school day. Students who violate the policy are subject to disciplinary action.
At Binger-Oney School in Caddo County, there is no use of any wireless blocking bags to enforce that district’s no-cellphone policy.
According to the 2025-26 student handbook, students from Pre-K through grade 6 are prohibited from having any personal smart devices on their person during the school day. Teachers have a designated place in their classrooms for any smart devices to be stored. Students in grades 7-12 are expected to keep devices turned off and out of sight. If a teacher or faculty member sees a student with a personal smart device out, it is confiscated.
For a first offense, a student receives lunch detention. All following violations of the policy require a parent or guardian to pick up the device at the end of the day and include increasing amounts of in-school suspension. On a fourth offense, the punishment is decided at the principal’s discretion.
Now that cellphones are no longer a big concern in Oklahoma classrooms, lawmakers are turning to the broader issue of technology use in the classroom.
An interim study organized by Sen. Ally Seifried, R-Claremore, and Rep. Chad Caldwell, R-Enid, looked at different approaches to technology in the classroom.
“Our focus must remain on what best supports learning, not on what’s trendy. While technology has its place, it must serve education, not the other way around,” said Caldwell in a press release after the study. “True learning comes from balance, and innovation should complement, not replace, traditional teaching methods that build focus, curiosity, and critical thinking. In the end, technology should be a tool, not a teacher.”
Melanie Darter, a seventh- grade science teacher at John Rex Charter School in Oklahoma City, shared her experiences using technology in the classroom during the interim study.
Darter said during her 18 years as a teacher, she has seen technology change drastically. While she sees benefits to using technology, to increase information retention, she has had to work to include other forms of learning, including teaching students to write notes instead of typing them.
'I truly believe there is a place and a time [for technology], but coming back to kind of the basics with them has been good,' she said.
Brandon Wilmarth, director of educational technology for Moore Public Schools, shared his district’s approach to technology during the study as well. He emphasized that technology has always been viewed with a certain amount of suspicion, but that new technology only enhances what is already happening in the classroom.
Dan Buck, a research fellow at American Enterprise Institute, also presented for the study. He was decidedly opposed to technology use in schools, claiming that it only hurts students.
Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, cognitive neuroscientist and co-founder of Learning Made Easy Global, also presented during the study and claimed that there is no evidence that technology improves learning.
He said heavy emphasis on technology in the classroom can prevent students from learning important basic skills like reading and writing.
Still, for students like Kuhn, laws that restrict access to community aren’t a good idea. She said students who want to learn will focus. And, at the same time, there is too much going on today to keep students from talking to their families when the need arises.
“It’s a big worry to know that I couldn’t contact my family if there was an issue at school,” she said.
Editor’s Note: M. Scott Carter contributed to this story.