By: Harrison Pray
FARGO, N.D. (Valley News Live) – A bill in the Minnesota House would remove personal devices from students in 8th grade and younger and ban cell phones during class time for high schoolers.
The bill passed the Minnesota Senate last year but failed in the House. Supporters are now pushing the measure again during the current legislative session.
Minnesota received a “D” grade on a national report card for school cell phone policies. North Dakota is considered one of the best in the country.
Katrina Ball, a co-lead on the effort to pass the bill, said the difference comes down to commitment at the state level.
“North Dakota just kind of said, ‘Hey, this is the standard. You need to remove the device, keep it away from the kid for the 7 hours a day, then they get it back—and that way their learning environment will see all the positives from seeing that removed,” Ball said.
Ball said her advocacy work at the local level led her to support a statewide approach.
“After advocating at the local level, I became convinced that this is a public health issue, and it needs to be addressed at the state level. So when they asked me to be a co-lead, I thought, ‘Absolutely! I will try my best!’” Ball said.
State Sen. Jordan Rasmusson, a co-author of the bill, said concerns about student safety without phones do not hold up, pointing to a national organization of school safety experts.
“The National Association of School Resource Officers have come out and said that these types of cell phone bans enhance safety within the schools,” Rasmusson said. “Schools and kids are actually safer if not everyone has their cell phone out all the time.”
The Minnesota Legislature is in session until mid-May. Rasmusson said the coming weeks will determine whether the bill has enough support to pass.
“We’re in session until mid-May here in Minnesota and so over the coming weeks we’ll be able to determine whether or not it has the support to become law this year — or if it’s an issue we’ll have to keep working on,” Rasmusson said.
Nineteen states plus Washington, D.C., have already passed bell-to-bell cell phone legislation. North Dakota is one of only two states in the country considered to have a gold standard policy.
