Palo Alto Unified is letting high schoolers keep their phones between classes, even as most Bay Area districts lock the devices away all day.

The district's policy, adopted last fall according to the Palo Alto Daily Post, bans cellphones during class at all schools but permits Paly and Gunn students to use their phones during passing periods, brunch and lunch. Students must store phones and smartwatches in designated holders when instruction begins.

That puts PAUSD on the lenient end of a regional spectrum. Oakland Unified requires students to seal phones in locked Yondr magnetic pouches for the entire school day. San Francisco Unified, San Jose Unified, Fremont Union High and several other Bay Area districts also require phones off and away from bell to bell, the Mercury News reported.

Gunn interim principal Erik Olah told the Mercury News that students at both high schools have been compliant so far.

"You can't just ban it and hope it goes away and stick your head in the sand," Olah said. "We need to teach kids how to use it properly."

The PAUSD Board of Education voted in 2025 to delay any decision on a districtwide bell-to-bell ban until 2028, saying it wants data from districts that adopted stricter rules first. Former Superintendent Don Austin, who resigned earlier in 2026, championed the lighter-touch approach, arguing that restricting personal phones makes little sense when the district gives every student a laptop with Wi-Fi access.

Not all parents agree.

At the board's first meeting of the school year on Aug. 18, more than a dozen parents arrived carrying signs, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. They brought a petition with more than 200 signatures calling for a full cellphone ban. As we reported Aug. 28, a parent group called Schools Beyond Screens is also pushing the district to cap classroom screen time.

Leor Melamedov, a Palo Alto parent and co-captain of the local Schools Beyond Screens chapter, told the Mercury News the group wants phone use prohibited during lunch, recess and passing periods for all students, modeled after Los Angeles Unified's policy.

Gunn sophomore Aiden Farr said at the Aug. 18 board meeting that the current policy strikes a reasonable balance between a full ban and open access, the Chronicle reported.

All of these local policies trace to one state law. Assembly Bill 3216, the Phone-Free School Act, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2024, required every California district to adopt a phone policy by July 1, 2026. A follow-up bill, AB 1644, would have extended bell-to-bell bans to all TK-8 public schools, but it recently stalled in the Legislature.

Gunn student board representative Enzo Wolff de Tourreil predicted in an Aug. 21 Gunn Oracle article that the new rules would not change much day to day. He had spoken at a 2025 board meeting in favor of the most minimal version of phone restrictions.

The board's next scheduled review of the phone question is 2028. Until then, Paly and Gunn students will pocket their phones at the bell and pull them back out at brunch.