This Twin Cities school is locking up cellphones. How's it working out?

The name on the jerseys is Pioneers, and when it comes to classroom cellphone bans, Hill-Murray School in Maplewood is helping to lead in a learned way.

President Melissa Dan had students ditching their devices in a previous job five years ago.

Now, Hill-Murray is building on its year-old in-class ban by requiring students to lock their phones in Yondr pouches for the entire day. The sleeves, which lock when shut, have become fixtures at phone-free gigs by artists like Bob Dylan, Jack White and Dave Chappelle.

There's been grumbling and complaints, to be sure, and rule breaking, too. Last week, a student became a repeat offender by responding to Assistant Principal Aaron Benner with a text from a burner phone.

But when the school day ended last Wednesday, there was no mad rush of students eager to unlock pouches and scroll through screens. Most appeared willing to at least wait until they got outside.

"Would we like to check our phones occasionally? Yes," said senior Kaylin Gruber. "But this is just how it's going to be. We're all just kind of accepting that now."

The case for phone bans

School began this year with districts seizing on advice from the state's elementary and secondary school principals that phones be put away for the day. The resulting news coverage was so extensive that Terry Morrow, general counsel of the Minnesota School Boards Association, said many members called him thinking a statewide ban already was in place.

Everyone is free to set their own policies, and in the case of Hill-Murray and several other metro-area Catholic schools, the decision was made to double down on phone-free crackdowns with Yondr pouches — which also are being put in use for the first time this fall at Andersen United Middle School in Minneapolis.

In her previous position at School of the Holy Child in Rye, N.Y., Dan instituted a cellphone ban, citing the device's negative effects on learning and development of social skills.

She relayed that message to the Hill-Murray community in July, and shared what a Google executive in New York told her about restricting his own child's access to social media.

"He said, 'This technology and these apps are designed to be as addictive as possible. Why would I want to expose my daughter to this?'" Dan said.

Last year, Hill-Murray high-schoolers could use their phones between classes and at lunch. Now, they and all middle students must begin the day by snapping them shut in the school-issued pouches, purchased by Hill-Murray with federal COVID relief money.

Students react

Hill-Murray has nearly 1,100 students, and Dan acknowledges they weren't thrilled with the Yondr pouches. In fact, she spoke that day with a few "who are still really mad at me," she said.

This summer, when Gruber pulled up an email describing the new policy, she said her immediate reaction was: "What the heck?" She is 18; a responsible person; an honor roll student, too. The school is trying to control us, she recalled thinking, it is taking our freedom away.

Now, she is more understanding. She is seeing some benefits. And she has gotten over the opening-day shock of unlocking a phone that hadn't blown up with notifications. Wait, Gruber thought, "I'm so popular," she recalled in a tongue-in-cheek way. Then, she realized everyone else had their phones locked up, too.

Gruber and others describe a lunch room that is louder and livelier with kids engaged not only with friends but also classmates they might not have spoken to previously. Friends meet face-to-face in hallways during passing time, yet are arriving to class more quickly. Generally, they seem "more present," they say.

The school made clear, too, that anyone with anxiety over the change can speak to a counselor, said senior Abby Haldorson.

But many students also miss their phones.

After freeing her device by placing it on a magnetic unlocking base, Gisele Parnell, a ninth-grader, said she'd prefer to be able to text friends during the day about after-school plans. Sometimes, she said, she needs to get in touch with her mom to arrange a ride home. But she also says she's more focused in class.

Overall?

"I am still opposed to this," Parnell said. "I don't like it."

Teachers, administrators react

Rebecca Fandrich, a theology teacher, enjoys not having to worry about kids sneaking peeks at phones. They're on task, she said. She also oversees dozens engaged in service learning and makes sure they have their phones with them when they tutor at local elementary and middle schools.

"They go out, they serve, then they come back and they lock it up with me," Fandrich said.

Benner, the assistant principal, said the student busted with the burner phone will have to spend a half-hour in detention. He says he's collecting about two phones a day, not bad for the number of kids at Hill-Murray, he said.

Communication between students and with teachers is on the rise, and Benner is predicting great things — perhaps a day when pouches aren't needed and the change in climate is such that students can carry phones in their backpacks or even set them on the desk alongside them and still resist the desire to check them.

"Maybe that's wishful thinking," he said. "But that's my goal."