Forsyth schools add phone ban, panic buttons and bus tracking

As Forsyth County Schools closed out the 2025-26 school year, the changes families will feel most are already taking shape in the backpack, on the bus and in the classroom: student phones are out, staff are carrying panic-button badges, and parents are getting bus tracking on their screens. The district's new rules reach nearly every corner of daily school life in Forsyth County, where transportation alone touches almost two-thirds of students.

The phone policy started on the first day of school, Aug. 5, 2025, after the Forsyth County Board of Education approved a districtwide ban on June 20, 2025. It covers phones, smart watches and tablets. Elementary and middle school students cannot use the devices during the school day, and high school students can use them only during lunch. The district said the goal was to cut distraction and support student well-being, a move that put Forsyth ahead of Georgia's Distraction-Free Education Act, which gave districts until January 2026 to write rules before the state law takes effect July 1, 2026.

Transportation changes followed on March 25, 2026, when the board approved a BusRight contract to put tablets in all 500 school buses. The first 100 tablets were scheduled for installation in spring 2026, and every bus is expected to be equipped by the start of the 2027-28 school year. Parents or guardians of enrolled students will be able to see bus locations in real time and get estimated arrival times, a change district officials say can turn routing work that once took hours into minutes.

For families that depend on the bus line each morning, the stakes are high: Forsyth County Schools says nearly two-thirds of its children ride to and from school every day. District transportation officials describe their mission as moving 100% of students safely 100% of the time, and the new tracking system is meant to make that easier to manage across a fleet of 500 buses. Together with the phone ban and staff panic-button badges, the changes mark a more tightly managed school day, with less room for distraction and more oversight from the first bell to the last stop.