Pupil safety: comprehensive school safety plans: use of smartphones.

Plain English Breakdown

The official source material does not provide specific details on the consequences if a safety plan does not address smartphone use during emergencies or threats.

Student Safety: School Plans and Smartphones

This law allows schools to include rules about smartphone use during emergencies or threats if these situations are clearly explained in their school safety plans.

What This Bill Does

• Requires public schools to create a comprehensive school safety plan that includes strategies for maintaining high levels of school safety and complying with existing laws related to student safety.
• School boards and charter schools must develop policies by July 1, 2026, to limit or prohibit students from using smartphones at school or under teacher supervision.
• Authorizes these policies to include rules about smartphone use during emergencies or threats if those situations are explicitly addressed in the comprehensive school safety plan.

Who It Names or Affects

• Public schools teaching kindergarten through grade 12
• School boards and charter schools

Terms To Know

Comprehensive School Safety Plan

A detailed plan that public schools create to keep students safe, including rules about emergencies and threats.

Smartphones

Mobile phones with internet access and other features like cameras and apps.

Limits and Unknowns

• The law does not specify what happens if a school safety plan does not address smartphone use during emergencies or threats.
• It is unclear how schools will decide which situations should be included in their safety plans regarding smartphone usage.

Official Summary Text

AB 962, Hoover.
Pupil safety: comprehensive school safety plans: use of smartphones.
Existing law provides that it is the intent of the Legislature that all public schools, teaching kindergarten or any of grades 1 to 12, inclusive, operated by a school district, in cooperation with specified entities and individuals, develop a comprehensive school safety plan, as provided. Existing law provides that school districts and county offices of education are responsible for the overall development of a comprehensive school safety plan for each of its schools, as provided. Existing law requires a comprehensive school safety plan to, among other things, identify appropriate strategies and programs that will provide or maintain a high level of school safety and address the school’s procedures for complying with existing laws related to school safety.
Existing law requires the governing
board of a school district, a county board of education, and the governing body of a charter school to, by July 1, 2026, develop and adopt a policy to limit or prohibit the use by its pupils of smartphones while the pupils are at a schoolsite or while the pupils are under the supervision and control of an employee or employees of that school district, county office of education, or charter school. Existing law, however, specifies circumstances in which a pupil may not be prohibited from possessing or using a smartphone, including, among others, in the case of an emergency or in response
to a perceived threat of danger.
This bill would instead authorize the prohibition on the use of a smartphone by a pupil in the case of an emergency or in response to a perceived threat of danger if that circumstance is explicitly addressed in a comprehensive school safety plan.

Current Bill Text

Download Bill PDF