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Park City 6-12 grade students to begin locking up phones during school

man hand holding smart phone
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man hand holding smart phone

Starting this fall, Park City School District students in sixth to twelfth grade must secure their cellphones in locked pouches during the school day.

Superintendent Lyndsay Huntsman notified families in an email last week that beginning with the 2025-2026 school year, Ecker Hill Middle School and Park City High School students must keep their devices in magnetically locked fabric pouches during school.

The pouches — known by the brand name Yondr — will stay with each student, but they won’t be able to access their phones.

The decision is in response to a new state law prohibiting cellphone or smart watch use during classroom hours and a district cellphone policy approved last year banning cellphones during school hours.

Huntsman said the change also comes after many community conversations and the successful use of the pouches at Treasure Mountain Junior High during the 2024-2025 school year.

“We had such great success in terms of the implementation at Treasure Mountain with our eighth and ninth grade students, that it seemed like if we didn't move forward, that would be a miss on our part, because we saw incidences go down at Treasure, it became a kinder school,” she said. 

She said students were fully engaged in learning during class and there were more positive interactions between students.

That was also expressed during a community forum in April. Ninth-grade Treasure teachers said the locked pouch system helped reduce problems in class and a big reason for that is there are uniform consequences.

Huntsman said Park City High School staff were also in favor of the pouches.

“We met with the high school staff towards the end of the school year just to have some dialog and get their input and feedback as to if we went down this path, how would you feel? And overwhelmingly positive, ‘please implement the pouches,’” she said. 

Huntsman noted high school staff are still working out some logistics as juniors and seniors pouches would need to be unlocked in the middle of the day as they are allowed to leave campus for lunch.

She said the pouch implementation will be a learning curve.

“It will not be implemented day one. We're going to spend the first two weeks of school educating students on the why; research and experience show that constant access to phones can undermine focus, increases anxiety, and it reduces meaningful interaction,” Huntsman said. 

After that, Huntsman said, teachers will begin locking students’ phones in the Yondr pouches during first period.