Central Oregon school districts release plans for phone policy, amid Governor Kotek phone ban

KTVZ on August 26, 2025

Matthew Draxton

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) — With students heading back to the classroom next week, school districts are adapting to Governor Tina Kotek’s order to ban phone usage in school. KTVZ has been following this story for six months, highlighting the efforts of parents, teachers, and legislators.

Central Oregon School Districts are now taking different approaches to the phone policy implementation.

Emerson Levy “Our kids that have cell phones during the day receive 200-5909 notifications a day, that is a lot of distraction.”

Driven by concerns about mental health, safety, and learning distractions. Parents like Amy Formica, and teachers like Virginia Johnson echo these concerns

Ami Formica said, “We actually did a survey of over 1000 families in Bend, La Pine last year about tech use in schools and phones specifically, and over 93% of respondents supported phone-free schools.”

“Teachers are just exhausted,” Johnson noted. She continued, “We’ve seen an increase in cheating and plagiarism and an increase in anxiety, depression, and loneliness at school.”

Middle schoolers, within the Bend La Pine Schools, already have these polices, and have seen success

Pacific Crest Middle School principal Sean Keeting said, “Parents love it because they feel like their kids are more focused on school. Teachers and staff love it because they feel like they can teach again.”

Who will feel the change most? High schoolers.

Public information officer for Bend La Pine Schools, Scott Maben, said Bend La Pine Schools’ former “policy permits high school students to have access to their phones during a few times. During the school day, lunch, for example.

The new complaint phone policy could mean no phone usage from bell to bell, but the policy for the district would not be implemented right away.

Maben continued saying, “No later than October 31st, we will have a revised policy on student devices, in effect, and then we will implement that policy no later than January 1st, 2026.”

Similar to Bend La Pine Schools, Crook County School District already has a phone policy for elementary, middle, and high school.

Interim Superintendent Joel Hoff said the district is, “Already ahead of the game in terms of no cell phones during class time at our high school. And now it’s just working with our board. They’re set to review a first draft in September.”

Crook County School District will be developing policy by October 31st and implementing the policy by January 2026.

“We know a lot of our students have work schedules or maybe taking care of, you know, younger siblings,” Hoff said. He continued, “So we’re navigating how those students can still get information throughout the school day.”

Matthew Draxton spoke with Redmond School District, who say it will be implementing a new policy immediately at the start of the 2025-26 school year. That policy will include zero student access to personal devices from bell to bell. They’ll revisit the policy in six months to review what worked and didn’t work in the first half of the school year.