Maryland Legislature Approves Bell-to-Bell Student Cellphone Ban for Public Schools

Two Prince George's County legislators drove one of the most sweeping school discipline reforms Maryland has attempted in years, and their bills cleared the General Assembly with near-total consensus. The House voted 135-1 for Delegate Adrian Boafo's House Bill 525 on March 23, and the Senate gave unanimous approval to Sen. Kevin Harris's companion Senate Bill 928 three days later, on March 26. Both carry the same name: the Maryland Phone-Free Schools Act.

Under the legislation, every county school board in Maryland must adopt a bell-to-bell prohibition on student use of personal electronic communication devices, with policies in place no later than the 2027-28 school year. The law itself takes effect July 1, 2026, giving districts roughly 14 months to build out enforcement frameworks before students feel the change in homeroom.

What that enforcement looks like inside a Prince George's County classroom is still a local decision, but the bill's structure narrows the options. School boards must establish administrator-enforced, tiered disciplinary measures for violations. Critically, the legislation bars schools from suspending or expelling a student solely for a phone violation, meaning the likely consequences are escalating confiscation: first offense, the device is held until the final bell; repeat violations, a parent or guardian must come in to retrieve it. Whether PGCPS uses locked storage bins, magnetic pouches, or a check-in-at-the-door approach remains for the district to determine, but the obligation to have a system is no longer optional.

The bill carves out firm exceptions designed to protect the students most likely to need a device during the day. Phones can still be used for purposes documented in a student's Individualized Education Program or 504 Plan, to manage a documented health condition, during a genuine emergency, or to address a language barrier. Those provisions matter significantly for Prince George's County Public Schools, which serves one of the most linguistically and economically diverse student populations in the state.

For Harris, who represents parts of Prince George's, Charles, and Calvert counties, the argument has always centered on attention and equity. "Our young folks in school, they need to be focused on school, focused on learning, focused on being in that environment and leaving the distractions alone," he said during the Senate's consideration of the bill. Boafo, whose district sits in Prince George's, had tried a narrower version of the same idea in the 2025 session; that bill stalled. This year's legislation passed with bipartisan backing and broad margins that leave little room to argue the Annapolis consensus is soft.

Prince George's County Public Schools, Maryland's second-largest district, will be among the systems with the most ground to cover in implementation. As of late 2024, 19 of Maryland's 24 school systems had recently updated their cellphone policies, but the new state law will pre-empt any local rules that fall short of a full-day prohibition. Maryland would join 27 states that had already enacted similar bell-to-bell restrictions as of this month.

Not everyone in the education establishment signed on. The Public School Superintendents' Association of Maryland, representing all 24 county superintendents statewide, filed an unfavorable position on HB 525, citing concerns about local control and implementation logistics. Their objection did not slow the bill's momentum, but it signals that the friction is likely to shift from Annapolis to individual school board rooms as districts begin the harder work of turning a 135-1 vote into a policy that holds up in a hallway on day one of the 2027-28 school year.