SANDPOINT — Connor Baranski has been teaching at Sandpoint High School for over a decade, slowly watching an unseen and unregulated addiction take over the classroom.

As cell phone use crept its way into schools, Baranski saw how the devices commanded students’ attention with a never-ending stream of information. He grew tired of the overwhelming amount of phone use in his class and said he found it personally offensive. 

"I very much see teaching as I’m a human being and there is value if I’m taking the time to teach something,” Baranski said. “The humane thing to do would be at least pretend to listen, make some sort of eye contact, the basic decency to not ignore somebody when they are interacting with you.” 

While there was a phone use policy in the Lake Pend Oreille School District, Baranski said it was generally left up to the teachers, which caused division between them and the students. That’s why the Lake Pend Oreille School Board implemented a stricter policy restricting cell phone use in school, setting a district wide standard at the start of the 2024 school year. 

"When I first moved here, it was like will they do something about [phone use], is it worth taking it down to the office, it was a big question mark,” said Allison Sletager, an English teacher at SHS. “Now there’s not a question anymore, it will be handled.” 

The policy update was a first in Bonner County and after its first year of implementation, educators in the district are glowing about the results. Baranski and Sletager said that they've seen their classes transform. 

“They were forced to engage with one and other because they couldn’t use their phones to check out,” Sletager said. “Instead of being distracted, they were actually collaborating and discussing, I didn’t have a single F last year.” 

Hope Barnes, a senior at SHS, said she’s seen similar changes in her advanced classes. She said that she’s seen more interaction between classmates and collaboration.  

Overall, students at SHS remain mixed on the policy, according to Roman Presta, a junior at SHS. Presta said that he sees himself as having a partial addiction to his phone and has to put it away when he does homework to avoid distractions. 

Barnes echoed those addictive-type feelings, saying that even now when she’s bored in class or in an uncomfortable situation, she thinks about using her phone. However, she said thanks to the policy and structure of school, she’s feeling that pull to look at her phone weaken. 

“I realized for myself that when I am on my phone, I’m not paying attention to anything else. There’s no balance between the two, being on my phone or listening to the teacher,” Barnes said. "You spend less time [using a phone] and it’s like your brain decides there’s other interesting things to focus on." 

This experience wasn’t unique to Baranski, Sandpoint High School or even LPOSD, 72% of high school teachers across the nation said cell phone use in classrooms is a major concern, according to a 2024 Pew Research Study poll. Due to the rapid takeover of phones, the country has seen a flurry of state legislation to address the growing complaints from educators. 

In October 2024, Idaho Governor Brad Little signed the Phone Free Learning Act, which encouraged all schools to have a comprehensive and district wide policy restricting cell phone use. The executive order brought Idaho in line with 26 other states across the nation, who passed similar policies last legislative session. 

The act is what made Priest River Lamanna Junior and Senior High School update its own policy about cell phone use. Unlike LPOSD’s policy, students are unable to use their phones at all on school grounds during school hours, with a few exceptions like family emergencies.  

"I firmly believe that cell phones are an addiction,” Haggett said. “I don’t think we’ve developed an etiquette yet... cell phones have blown up so quickly we don’t the societal rules for them, so I think that’s what we are catching up to with this legislation.” 

Despite its newer implementation, Haggett said she’s seen very similar results to SHS, with more interpersonal connections between students. With students not allowed to use them during passing periods, she said she’s seen students playing sports during the lunch break instead of using their phones. 

For Baranski and Sletager, they said they would advocate for a stricter policy at SHS, more in line with Priest River’s, which would restrict phone use even during passing periods. They said that the students need to be pushed out of their comfort zone further and embrace the community around them. 

"It’s a lot harder to sit by yourself in cafeteria and just look around than to look at a screen,” Baranski said. “That [policy] would take us to the next step of forcing these kids into a reasonable level of being uncomfortable and go talk to people.” 

Both Haggett and Jacki Crossingham, principal at SHS, said there are students who are still fighting the updated policy, but the majority of students understand and cooperate with the policy. They also said they feel a more welcoming atmosphere at their schools and credit some of that to the lack of cell phone use in classrooms. 

In Bonner County, these policies remain in their infancy, however they have existed around the county for some time. A 2021 study published in Canadian Journal of Education Administration and Policy found that phone use in schools can negatively impact student behavior and well-being. 

The study found that test scores for low-achieving students improved by 14% when policies restricting phone use were in place. Sletager said anecdotally that since the policy’s implementation, her freshman English classes have seen improvements in attendance and F-rates. 

“Across the board in freshman classes our F-rate went way down, our school F-rate went down and a fraction of that can be attributed to that [policy],” Sletager said. “I felt a much bigger difference; the kids were so much more engaged. They genuinely seemed to enjoy school more, they were talking and laughing, it was different.”