Johnson County school districts enacted new cellphone rules this year. Are they helping?

Prior to Olathe Public Schools implementing its cellphone policy, Lisa Mansfield spent a lot of time policing her classroom and asking her students to put away their phones.

“From the classroom side of things, I think it was a [much] bigger challenge because it wasn’t consistent throughout the building,” Mansfield said.

While the California Trail Middle School Spanish teacher didn’t allow her students to use cellphones in her classroom, other teachers allowed students to be on their phones once they completed their assignments or listen to music while they work.

“I think it just made things very confusing for kids, so I think that’s one of the big benefits of the new policy — that they just know. They know what’s expected of them all over the place, which is really nice,” Mansfield said.

Olathe is one of the five Johnson County school districts that adopted a cellphone policy to curb phone use and the corresponding distractions during the school day.

Alongside Blue Valley and Gardner-Edgerton, Olathe adopted its policies before the 2024-25 school year began. Shawnee Mission was the last to join the districts, adopting its own policy before the second half of the school year.

“I think there’s a very general feeling that, you know, we all appreciate having it consistent across the district,” California Trail Principal Mike Wiley said. “Then it wasn’t one person at California Trail being a bad person, you know, being the bad guy or that kind of thing. It’s something that we’re all behind.”

Countywide changes

Johnson County’s three largest districts — Blue Valley, Olathe and Shawnee Mission — adopted a policy that breaks down by grade level.

In Olathe, elementary and middle schoolers are required to put their phones away for the entire school day, and high schoolers can use their devices during passing periods and lunch.

“From my side of things, it was immediately easy. I think we are very black and white — if we see it, it goes to the office,” Mansfield said in January. “I’ve only taken one the entire school year. … Prior to this, like last year, I would see kids reading a book and I’d wonder, ‘Are they playing with their phone behind that book?’”

“I’m sure we’ve had phones collected and turned in, but from my side of things it’s gone really, really well and really made a difference,” she said.

Following suit, the Shawnee Mission school board adopted its policy in January before classes resumed. Elementary students need to put away all electronic devices for the entire school day. Middle schoolers need to keep their phones in their lockers, but they can check during passing periods. High schoolers can use their phones during passing periods and lunch, but they need to be stored away during class time.

After a three week grace period, the new rules are now in full effect in Shawnee Mission. District Chief Communications Officer David Smith told The Star in an email that, “we are far from the point where we are ready to draw conclusions from its implementation.”

“The administration has committed to the board that we will bring back an evaluation of the policy after it has had time to work,” Smith said.

‘Torn on the whole thing’

In Olathe, which implemented its policy at the beginning of the year, leadership and teachers spoke highly of the cellphone policies, but others have lingering concerns around its effectiveness.

An Olathe attendance office employee, who requested anonymity for the sake of her job, told The Star that she’s seeing a lot of kids who are still contacting their parents throughout the day, and her office is fielding calls from parents who say their kids just texted them that they’re sick or have a headache and asked to be picked up from school.

“This policy [went] into effect in August, it was enforced maybe the first month or so, and I don’t see it enforced at all anymore. My kids included are texting me throughout the day,” the administrative assistant said. “Earlier on, you would see teachers saying, ‘Hey put your phone away,’ … now not so much.”

While she would love for students to be more focused and wished phones were not a distraction, she does see why students would want to have them out to reach parents.

She recalled times when students reached out to parents because they had an accident, when they’re sick in the bathroom or if female students started their period in the middle of the school day.

“I think that there needs to be more of a discussion around it … because I think there are situations where they just need access,” the administrative assistant said. “Embarrassing situations where you don’t want to go to the nurse or tell your male teacher you just bled through your pants. When you have the benefits of technology, it has its place. … I don’t know, I’m really torn on the whole thing.”

Phone ‘whack-a-mole’

Others in Olathe want to see the district tighten up its policy around phone use. LuAnn Fox, an English teacher at Olathe North High School, told The Star that phones remain a huge problem in her classroom.

Olathe’s policy allows for high schoolers to be on their phones during passing periods, lunch, and before and after school, and phones need to be put away during class time, but students continue to break the rules, she said.

“It’s like whack-a-mole on the phones so you’re saying to yourself, ‘Well I’m actually trying to teach skills, which they’re not wanting to pick up because they would rather just, I don’t know, look at whatever they’re looking at. TikTok … even movies at some point.”

Fox said she’s become a policeman looking under desks to see if students are on their phones during class time even with the policy in place.

“I didn’t get a degree to do that. A lot of teachers are masters prepared and you’re like, seriously I have a master’s degree and my job right now is to see whether or not you have a phone?” Fox said.

As technology has evolved during her 30 years of teaching, so have the problems, she said. She’d like to see the district bring the conversation around cellphone policy back to the table in order to keep the classroom space sacred. But she understands that technology isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

“I mean, we used to care about it for cheating, like don’t text your people in the class in the afternoon what the answers are … that used to be our big problem, but we don’t even care about that anymore. I mean it’s just all about teaching them anything,” she said.

Sense of belonging

Olathe Northwest High School AP Government and AP Psychology teacher Meg Shadid said that she has noticed an increase in student reliance on their phones in her eight years of teaching, and the policy has helped make cellphones less of an issue in her classroom.

“Now in second semester, I have noticed specifically that it’s a global expectation that our phones are just not out. I don’t even have to typically say at the beginning of class, ‘OK, it’s time to put our phones away. That doesn’t have to happen anymore,” she said. “So that’s been really nice, just having kind of across the board, the expectation that when we’re in class time, we’re doing things in front of us that are valuable.”

She’s noticed her students are more willing to deeply engage in discussions and focus on what’s happening during her lessons as opposed to trying to wrap things up early so they can sit on their phones.

“I think really the spirit of this policy is to reinforce the idea that what we’re doing in a classroom is valuable, whether that be largely from an instructional standpoint, or even from those social conversations and connections that can happen between students to increase their sense of belonging while they’re here at school,” Shadid said.

This story was originally published February 28, 2025 at 6:00 AM.