DOYLESTOWN, Pa. — Gov. Josh Shapiro signed a law Monday requiring every Pennsylvania school to ban student cell phone use for the entire school day, with each policy due by the start of the 2027-28 school year.
Shapiro signed Senate Bill 1014 at Lenape Middle School in the Central Bucks School District, at an event the governor’s office streamed on Facebook. The law takes effect immediately. Shapiro said students need to spend less time on their phones and more on learning and on each other face to face.
Only three of the Lehigh Valley’s 17 school districts, Allentown, Easton Area and Whitehall-Coplay, had posted rules barring phones all day in every grade as of last week, according to each district’s policy or handbook.
The law covers public, charter, cyber charter and private schools. The school day includes lunch, recess and the time between classes. Each school’s governing body decides how phones are kept out of use, and nothing requires a school to take a student’s phone. The law applies to any personal internet-capable device.
Students with a documented medical need, their own or an immediate family member’s, can use a phone, as can students whose individualized education or 504 plan includes one. So can English learners using translation and students a teacher allows to use a phone briefly for a lesson when a school-issued device won’t work and the principal agrees. A school’s policy can let a principal approve other exceptions of up to one school day.
Schools must tell parents how to reach their child during the day, through a staffed method such as a phone number or email, and how to sign up for emergency alerts. Each district, charter or private school must also send the state Department of Education proof that its policy is posted online.
Shapiro said the law brings no additional funding. Asked about parents’ concerns over reaching their children in an emergency, Shapiro said: “I think more broadly, we shouldn’t accept the idea that a cell phone is going to make a kid safer, make a school safer.” He added: “What we need to do is get the guns out of the hands of those people who shouldn’t have them.” He called for comprehensive gun reform.
The House passed the bill 141-62 on Oct. 19, and the Senate concurred 47-3 on Oct. 21. Seven of the Valley’s 11 House members voted no: Republican Reps. Gary Day, Ann Flood, Milou Mackenzie and Zachary Mako and Democratic Reps. Jeanne McNeill, Steve Samuelson and Ana Tiburcio. Sens. Lisa Boscola, Jarrett Coleman and Nick Miller voted yes.
Lenape already has a rule, posted on its website: phones must be off and out of sight during the school day, and a first offense means the device is held until day’s end.
Kirsten McGowan, a co-lead of PA Unplugged, a parent coalition, said at the event: “This is a big step. Our work is not finished.”
