By Delayna Earley
The Island News
The numbers are clear, Beaufort County students have done well in adhering to the cell phone restrictions introduced this year.
During the Beaufort County Board of Education Meeting on March 4, Mellow Lee, Deputy Superintendent, spoke to board members about how the community, parents and students have taken to the cell phone ban during school hours that was implemented at the start of the 2024-2025 school year.
All South Carolina public schools were required to follow the statewide cell phone ban by no later than January 2025, but Beaufort County enacted theirs in August 2024 so they could get ahead of the ban.
They created their original policy with the intention of amending it once the S.C. Department of Education made their policy more clear.
Originally, cell phones and personal electronic devices were banned during school hours in elementary and middle schools, and high schoolers were able to have their cellular devices during their lunch break. But the district adjusted the rules in January 2025 to comply with S.C. state regulations, which included no longer allowing cell phones during lunch break for high school students.
Per the Beaufort County School District (BCSD), a personal electronic device is defined as a device that “has the capability of electronically sending, receiving, storing, recording, reproducing or displaying information and/or data;” such as a computer, tablet, e-reader, portable media player, drone, video gaming system, GPS instruments, digital cameras and camcorders.
A personal communication device is “defined as having the capability of communicating by means of sending receiving, storing, recording, reproducing and/or displaying information and data, any device that emits an audible signal, vibrates, displays a message, live streams or otherwise summons or delivers a communication to the processor;” examples of this would include cellular phones, smart watches and headphones.
Lee said that they have found that the lack of cell phones in the classroom this year has led to improved academic performance, reduced bullying and better mental health outcomes for students.
In August 2024, there were 210 infractions, in September there were 246, in October there were 219, in November there were 137 and in December there were 79.
Following the winter break, there were 109 violations in infractions in January and 75 in February, all together totaling 1075 infractions so far in the 2024-2025 school year.
These numbers are just looking at cell phone violations and how they relate to the discipline matrix in the first three levels of discipline, once a student surpasses three violations they go to a different level and those violations are not reflected in these numbers.
Additionally, these numbers do not calculate the number of students who have had infractions but the number of infractions, as Superintendent Frank Rodriguez pointed out when talking to board members.
“Our successful implementation is largely due to our parent support and student compliance,” Lee said. “We are very appreciative to our community support, and we believe that our focus on instruction will lead to greater achievement for our students.”
Some board members were impressed, but others had questions regarding the low number of infractions for cell phone usage, especially as this is the first year for the ban.
“I’m puzzled about how we were able to get those numbers down in January and February,” said Board member Will Smith. “I just don’t see how the numbers came down so quickly when we just started the no cell phone usage [during lunch for high schoolers] in January.”
Lee said that initially, there were a lot of infractions as students got used to the rules, but as the year has continued the numbers have shown that students are more accepting of the new rules than expected.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
