Alabama school districts are permitted to enforce student cell phone policies, following a unanimous vote of the State Board of Education.

“It is still a local board decision, so local boards might consider it and say ‘no, we are going to let students have their cell phones,’ but that will be a local board decision,” Superintendent Dr. Eric Mackey said at Thursday’s meeting.

“With the passage of this resolution, the board is saying we want you to revisit your policy and we want you to strongly consider not letting students have cell phones during the school day.”

Mackey said school systems that have implemented stricter cell phone policies have seen improvement.

“Discipline is down. Discipline issues are down significantly in Montgomery County by about a third,” he said. “I’m sure that’s to a lot of issues, things that they’re doing, Dr. (Melvin) Brown’s put in place, but a lot of it is, they attribute to, students not having their cell phones during the day.”

Mackey said that Florida is the only state where lawmakers have curtailed cell phone use in schools, banning their use during class time.

Austen Shipley is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News.