CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia’s largest school system is looking back on the first half of the 2025-2026 academic year and how students have taken to the new cell phone policy.

Last year, lawmakers passed H.B. 2003, which mandated county boards of education to develop policies before the start of the school year for devices like cellphones and tablets. The law requires counties to document offenses in the West Virginia Education Information System.

Kanawha County’s specific policy bans elementary school and middle school students from having their devices during the entirety of the school day, while high schoolers can access their phones in between classes and during lunch.

Paula Potter

“If you talk to students, they think it’s going rather well,” Superintendent Dr. Paula Potter said during a Monday board meeting. “Even the students that were very opposed to it have talked about how it’s helped them be more focused in the classroom, which sometimes is a hard pill to swallow.”

“We’ve been super proud of our students for making such a big change, especially our senior students that have had cell phones for a big part of their lives at school,” she continued.

Potter reported that since the beginning of the school year in August, just over 1,400 discipline infractions have been reported in county high schools and roughly 650 in middle schools.

The county’s steepest incline in infractions came in September and October and there has been a steady decline in every month since.

Potter says with a new policy as touchy as this, there’s sure to be growing pains.

“We have a couple of high schools that have higher numbers, and I think they a couple of folks that are very concentrated, but we’re working through those issues,” Potter said. “With any type of new rule, you have people that push the limits a little bit, so we just have to find that balance. We don’t want it to be a rule that is keeping kids away from instruction.”

“I do think if you walk into a high school, you will see a cell phone here or there, but our teachers and our administrators are handling it as they need to and we will continue to communicate with parents and students about appropriate use of cell phones in school,” she said.

Potter says that Deputy Superintendent Dr. Robert Smith, who comprised the policy report, is giving principals a clear focus for the winter semester.

“He is challenging our principals to look at student infractions instead of just number of incidences for the second semester so that we can begin working harder with those students that are having multiple infractions because it seems to be repeat offenders, not just random. For the most part, students are following the rules,” she said.