WEST COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) – Classrooms will soon be cellphone-free zones for public school students across South Carolina.

On Tuesday, the State Board of Education approved a model policy to ban cell phones for students in South Carolina public schools.

Now districts will have to decide whether they will implement the state’s policy or put their own stricter measures in place.

“We’ve left a lot of flexibility to you as local districts about how you’re actually going to implement this during the day because we know that all schools are different, all districts are different,” State Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver told reporters following the board’s meeting Tuesday afternoon in West Columbia.

Banning cell phones in South Carolina schools has strong support at the highest levels of leadership in Columbia.

The General Assembly enacted a temporary law in the current state budget that orders all districts to enact a policy to do this or put their state funding at risk if they fail to comply.

Gov. Henry McMaster urged the State Board to approve its model policy Tuesday, writing in a letter to board members, “Our responsibility is to create an environment where teachers can teach, and students learn.”

“We know that these digital distractions and devices are creating mental health challenges, they are distracting students from learning, and they are really making it much harder for our teachers to do what they’re there to do, which is teach,” Weaver said.

The model policy the State Board approved Tuesday was crafted by the South Carolina Department of Education.

It prohibits students from accessing devices, including cellphones, smart watches, tablets, and gaming devices, during the school day, unless the district superintendent approves their use.

Exceptions would be allowed for students with IEPs and medical plans if the device is needed for medical or educational purposes, as well as for students who serve as volunteer firefighters or in other emergency organizations, with permission from their district superintendent.

Students would have to keep their phones and other devices in their lockers, backpacks, or wherever the district decides they should be kept, and they would be able to outright prohibit students from bringing them on campus at all.

Districts would still have some discretion over whether this applies to time spent on school buses, field trips, and athletic events, as well as what consequences students face for violations.

“Removing the child from class is going to be way down the road. The idea is to have kids in class and paying attention,” State Board member Christian Hanley Jr. said during Tuesday’s meeting.

At a meeting last month, during which the State Board postponed its final vote on the model policy to give it more consideration, members heard concerns from the public about districts imposing severe penalties, like suspensions, that would go against the intent of the cellphone ban.

The policy eventually earned the support of all but one State Board member, Beverly Frierson, though others expressed some hesitations about it.

“There is the law of unintended consequences, and it frightens me, and it is not even Halloween,” State Board Chair David O’Shields, who also serves as the superintendent in Laurens County School District 56, said during Tuesday’s meeting.

If they have not already, districts must adopt a local policy sometime this fall, with full statewide implementation starting in January.

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