Kansas just enacted one of the most aggressive statewide bans on student electronics in the country, and the bill that comes with it landed on the desks of local school districts — not the state treasury.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly signed HB 2299 in March, and the law took effect with the 2026 school year. It requires every public school and accredited private school in Kansas to ban students from accessing cell phones, smartwatches, tablets, wireless earbuds, and any other electronic device from the first bell to dismissal. Devices must be powered off and stored somewhere kids can't get to them. No exceptions for lunch. No exceptions for recess. No exceptions for the hallways.
This is states doing what the federal government won't — and in this case, shouldn't. There is no plausible federal role in whether a seventh-grader in Topeka is scrolling TikTok between periods. The Founders left that kind of question to the states for a reason. Kansas looked at the evidence — ample research showing smartphones and social media damage adolescent attention and mental health, and that devices in classrooms enable constant distraction — and acted.
According to the Daily Caller, most states with electronics restrictions have stopped short of this standard. Florida's 2023 ban only covered instructional time and let teachers hand devices back to students. A 2025 update extended the full-day ban to elementary and middle schools, but high schoolers still get phone access outside the classroom. California's 2024 law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, merely requires districts to set their own policies — a recipe for inconsistency that kicks the hardest decisions down to local boards.
Kansas didn't punt. The state said: no phones, all day, every school. That's the kind of clarity that actually changes behavior.
But there's a catch, and it's a familiar one. The state didn't appropriate a dime to implement its own mandate. The Daily Caller reports that Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools alone spent around $150,000 installing dedicated lockers for middle and high school students. Statewide, districts absorbed an estimated $13.4 million in costs for storage solutions and staff time. That's $13.4 million pulled from budgets that were already stretched — to comply with a law the state legislature passed without funding.
A statewide ban funded by the state would have made more sense, as the Caller's Mary Rooke noted. But the benefit still outweighs the cost. Teachers spend less instructional time playing device police. Students spend more time actually learning. The research supports it, and common sense does too.
The open question is whether other states will match Kansas's standard — and whether they'll pick up the tab when they do.
