Magnetic pouches used to prevent the use of cell phones and smart devices by students during the entirety of the school day will be employed within East Providence school buildings in the upcoming academic year.

East Providence already has a policy on the books outlawing students from using cell phones during class — utilizing a system where phones are placed into hanging organizer pouches on classroom doors, which are picked up by students after class adjourns.

But that won’t be good enough to satisfy a new state law, explained assistant superintendent, Lisa Benedetti-Ramzi, at the Aug. 11 meeting of the East Providence School Committee.

The law was passed by the general assembly with support by the state and local teacher unions in 2025, and went into effect on Aug. 1, 2026. It mandates a so-called “bell-to-bell” policy for preventing access to phones and other smart devices, like watches, meaning they are to be restricted from use throughout the entire day, not just during class time.

The district selected Yondr as the vendor to provide the pouches to its secondary schools. Utilized already in the nearby Bristol-Warren and Barrington school districts, the Yondr pouch works by placing all electronic devices inside and then placing the pouch’s locking mechanism over a magnetic hub, multiple of which will be installed in school buildings. At the end of the day, the hub can be switched into unlocking mode, allowing students to open the pouch and access their device at the end of the day. Students would be allowed to keep the pouch on them during school once it is locked.

Policy still needs written

While it should be stated that the specifics of East Providence’s policy for the Yondr pouches still needs to be written and approved by the policy subcommittee and full school committee, there was information presented at the Aug. 11 meeting to inform what that could wind up looking like.

Benedetti-Ramzi confirmed that there will be multiple spots throughout school buildings where pouches can be unlocked, and students may have them unlocked when there are mitigating circumstances.

“If they are early dismissed for being sick or an emergency, for whatever reason, we have the ability to unlock them in an emergency situation or early dismissal,” Benedetti-Ramzi said, adding that there could be exceptions made for medical devices and for students with certain learning requirements in their IEPs.

Benedetti-Ramzi confirmed when asked by committee members that the schools would not be in the business of searching students to ensure that they had placed their devices into a pouch at the beginning of school. Existing disciplinary policy would apply to students caught using their phones.

“If you attest that you have no pouch or device on you, you move on through your day. If you’re found with it, the normal disciplinary consequences apply,” she said. “If Ryan comes to school and has his cell phone with him and does not comply with the pouch policy and keeps it away and nobody sees it, we’re not searching him.”

Benedetti-Ramzi said that although the district could have, in theory, found a way to comply with the law without purchasing Yondr pouches, administrators felt the pouches were the “safest” way to go, in terms of potential liability for handling expensive personal devices of students.

“I think it’s, quite frankly, the safest,” she said. “You could do something like an envelope, and then we take possession of the envelope, but this takes liability out of our hands because the student retains possession of it.”

Committee concerns

On the subject of the more literal definition of “safety”, however, committee members made their discomfort with the pouch concept clear.

“This is what parents are reaching out to me about,” said school committee chair, David Luiz. “They want their child to be able to contact them in the event that there is an active shooter, heaven forbid, or any type of situation similar to that. They want their child to be able to contact them, and vice-versa.”

At-large committee member, Anthony Ferreira, argued that sometimes students are the ones to document instances of vandalism and issues that need to be addressed within school buildings.

“There are things happening in these schools that we’re only aware of, or at least myself, because of the students and the parents,” he said. “The student sends a video to the parent, the parent sends it to me, I’d call the previous superintendent and start the go-around.”

Ferreira became more openly and contentiously opposed to the policy as the meeting continued, saying the district should be focusing more on punishing students who break the cell phone policy rather than making every student forfeit their devices.

“I don’t like seeing that because of a handful of individuals, that all of our students have to abide by something,” he said, later adding, “I see this as total nonsense from the State of Rhode Island over a cell phone.”

None of the school committee members present vocally supported the pouch initiative, but simultaneously lamented the district’s own wishes being out of their hands.

“Regardless of my personal feelings on this, this is a state law,” said Ward 1 representative, Ryan Queenan.

An ‘unfunded mandate’

Benedetti-Ramzi told the committee bluntly at the beginning of her presentation that the law amounted to an “unfunded mandate” from the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), and will require the district to spend $71,764 from its Project Aware grant to purchase enough pouches for its middle school and high school students, with each school having an additional allotment in reserve in the case pouches are lost or damaged.

Students will be financially responsible for damage occurring to the pouches, or for replacing lost pouches.

Although grant funds were able to be utilized for this initial purchasing, Luiz made the point that going forward into the future, the burden will be transferred to the school budget, and thus to the taxpayers if additional pouches are needed or are replaced.

Ward 4 committee member, Jessica Beauchaine, lamented that the money used for the pouches could be better spent elsewhere, and that the current cell phone policy seemed to be working fine.

“For $70,000 we could hire a behavioral specialist. We could hire someone else for the year in a building, Instead of putting our cell phones locked up,” she said. “I didn’t hear of an issue this year at all in the schools.”