Lawmakers advance ban on phones during the school day

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Smartphones are ubiquitous in today’s world including in schools. But a bill in the Alabama legislature would ban phones during the school day. We hear about that and other legislative action this week with Todd Stacy, host of Capital Journal on Alabama Public Television.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity.

Give us more details on this cell phone in schools bill.

Well, that’s exactly what it is. They’re attempting to ban the use of cell phones. The phrase is from “bell to bell” — from the beginning bell in the morning to the going home bell. There was some talk about should there be a 10-minute break to check your cell phone or something like that. But lawmakers really want a complete ban.

This has been put in place in some Alabama districts. In fact, we had a local principal testify before the committee saying they’ve implemented a cell phone ban in their schools this year, and they’re already seeing a difference in terms of students’ ability to concentrate and not be completely distracted by social media and also behavioral things, bullying and things like that. So I do expect them to move forward with this bill. It could see some changes, but they want cell phones out of the classroom from “bell to bell.“

I thought it was notable that no one spoke in opposition to this bill when it was in committee hearings. It passed out of the House and Senate committees unanimously. How unusual is that?

For non-controversial legislation, that tends to happen. You’re right, there’s not a lot of pushback on this bill from officials. What pushback there is is from parents, but it’s quiet. They don’t really want to admit that they have a problem with this. It’s understandable. You want to be able to reach your child in school. You think about that from a parent’s perspective, and that’s understandable. But it’s not saying they can’t bring phones on campus. They just can’t have them actively used in the classroom. And so I think that’s enough of a compromise that parents are okay with it.

Another bill before lawmakers tackles technology in children. It would require app stores to verify the age of users before downloading apps. Give us a sense of how people were lining up around this one.

This really is comes out of a bill that passed last year that required age verification for adult websites, basically pornography. So they want to basically bring this exact same situation for apps, for social media apps, whatever it is that you have to verify your age and certain ones being age appropriate. This is not the only social media bill. There’s talk about limiting social media use. There’s talk about requiring parental consent if you’re under 18, or just outright banning social media from students under a certain age, whether it’s 16 or 18. This mirrors what is happening on the federal level. Our own Senator Katie Britt has legislation dealing with this.

It’s a thorny issue because I think everybody agrees that there are risks and threats online for children. But there are First Amendment implications and lawmakers want to do the right thing on this, but they don’t want to pass something that could end up being either unconstitutional or create other problems down the road. But it’s certainly something to watch.

Finally, a bill is through a House committee that would enhance legal protections for police officers. This bill was approved but not before some debate. Give us a sense of that debate.

This is a big bill this session. Pretty controversial because you’re talking about police immunity, meaning if there’s an officer-involved shooting, did the officer act appropriately or inappropriately. There are obviously measures in place to discipline police officers even indict and convict them. We’ve seen that. Just think about the last five or six years and all the conversation around that. And so lawmakers are wanting to put more protections in place, more process in place, to make sure that officers are protected from maybe frivolous prosecutions and things like that. Their argument is that it’s really difficult to recruit and to retain police officers because they feel like nobody’s on their side, that they’re gonna be improperly prosecuted. So they’re trying to fix that. It’s called Back the Blue Act.

But Democrats have pushed back, saying we don’t want it to go too far to where there’s not something in place to deal with police officers who do act inappropriately. There’s a lot of back and forth, a lot of bipartisan negotiation on this. I think that’s notable because they’re not trying to jam it through. And Democrats, even though they’re a super minority, are definitely at the table with this police immunity bill.