Carey Gallagher began her senior year at Yonkers Middle High School in New York this week alongside 1,438 students, now all required to place their cellphones in a locked magnetic pouch.
Yonkers School District purchased Yondr phone pouches for about 11,000 students to comply with the statewide mandate that bans phones in classrooms. The pouch, which students carry with them, is locked and unlocked using magnets affixed to the entrance of the school and outside the main office.
Gallagher, 16, said she had already started to put limits on her phone use this summer when she found out the pouches would be required at school, and she was “partially excited,” but also worried about “how everyone else was going to take it.”
She said some students welcomed the idea, but others plotted how to destroy or dismantle the dark gray pouch with bright green lining — a sentiment heard across several New York districts as the school year started.
Still, a solution to containing cellphones was needed, many educators and parents say.
“Our children were distracted” by their cellphones, said Dr. Sandy Hattar, the principal at Yonkers Middle High School and an educator for 20 years. She said students always wanted to know what was going on in the bathrooms, in the next room or across the hall instead of being “centered in the classroom and learning from what was happening in front of them.”
Students in 35 states, including New York, Florida, Texas, California, Massachusetts and Georgia, now contend with laws or rules limiting phones and other electronic devices in school. At least 2.5 million students across the country are using Yondr pouches, and the company said the number could triple after the 2025 numbers are tallied in about three months.
Experience life outside of a “fully digital realm”
Yondr CEO Graham Dugoni said he founded the company in 2014 when he was living in San Francisco and had the idea of creating “phone-free spaces.”
Dugoni, who uses a flip phone, said reading philosophers from Søren Kierkegaard to Albert Borgmann helped shape his ideas to create spaces where people can be free “from the constant tug and pull of smartphones,” and build opportunities for people “to experience life outside of a fully digital realm.”
He said a school in San Francisco was their first client and the company now has school partners in all 50 states and 45 different countries. More than 100 people work for the company and several collaborate closely with the schools to ensure not only compliance but also a successful implementation.
Alana Berk was a teacher in Nashville before joining Yondr to help schools from Virginia to Maine integrate the pouches into students’ lives. Berk said many schools welcome the change.
The cost of buying the pouches — roughly $25-30 per student — has set off debates around how schools should be spending their limited budgets. It’s a particular issue for districts struggling with crumbling infrastructure, limited textbooks and access to other technology needed to learn.
Dugoni declined to disclose the company’s revenue but said that since the end of the pandemic, they’ve had triple-digit annual growth. A national database of school spending is not available, but some states and districts made their budgets public. New York’s 2024 state budget set aside $13.5 million to assist school districts in enforcing the statewide “bell-to-bell” cellphone ban.
Yonkers principal Hatter said the pouches cost about $30 and each student is responsible for their Yondr if it’s lost or ruined — “just like a textbook,” she said. Districts in various states have reported spending from $26,000 to over $370,000, with Cincinnati Schools saying they spent $500,000 to provide pouches for students in grades 7-12.
From skepticism to anger, students adjust to a new pouch reality
Sariyah Fidelis,17, was skeptical when she first heard the pouches were coming to her school. She wanted to listen to music on her phone and be able to check things in class as she needed. The senior was worried about delays in getting and out of the building and there being chaos at the school.
The students each got a pouch on the first school day to keep for the year. The pouches with their phones are kept with the students, but they need to use one of the school’s magnetic openers in order to take their phone out of the pouch. Some students have reported long lines and disruption at their schools as they wait to open their pouches.
But Fidelis said on the first day at Yonkers, the lines went pretty smoothly and she saw quick benefits. Instead of being on her phone the whole lunch period, she spoke to her friend. “I felt human,” she said.
“Our whole perspective is that it’s not taking something away from students, it’s giving them something back,” Dugoni told CBS News.
Other students were not so enthralled by the pouch; some reported seeing classmates bypass the Yondr pouch by using their Apple watches, buying “burner” phones and putting them in the pouch, breaking the pouch and other tricks to get to their phones.
Dugoni acknowledged that there will always be some students who can figure out how to get around the restrictions. The purpose of the pouches, he said, was to create a culture change in a school and create an environment conducive to their learning and development.
More than 70% of high school teachers in the U.S. say cellphones are a major classroom distraction, according to the Pew Research Center Center.
Leila Pasqualini, a math teacher at Yonkers for 27 years, was hopeful the new system would work and stay in place. She said she wanted her students to know right from wrong and learn critical thinking — and that wasn’t possible with technology, she said.
Hattar said that although she was initially worried that banning students’ phones would be challenging, now she hopes taking phones out of the classrooms will help students engage.
“Of course, there will be kinks, but we’ll iron it out together,” said Hatter, adding that she already notices a difference. “There is more talking, it’s louder, but it’s a positive loud.”
Cara Tabachnick is a news editor at CBSNews.com. Cara began her career on the crime beat at Newsday. She has written for Marie Claire, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. She reports on justice and human rights issues. Contact her at [email protected]
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