After months of discussion, Tamalpais Union High School District trustees have decided against ordering locking pouches for students’ cellphones.

Instead, the board wants the district to strengthen the enforcement of its existing cellphone restrictions. Under a plan launched in January, the five high schools have hanging caddies in each classroom for storing phones during instruction time, but students can remove them between classes and at lunch.

The district had been considering a switch to Yondr locking pouches, which would cost $160,000 the first year and $20,000 to $30,000 annually after that.

“I would like to move toward a phone-free day, but I don’t know if Yondr pouches are the answer,” Leslie Harlander, the board president, said at the trustees’ meeting Tuesday. “First, let’s make sure our current system is working. Then, maybe next year, we could do a one-year pilot of the Yondr pouches or something similar at one of the high schools.”

The decision came after more than a dozen students, parents and teachers testified in opposition to the pouches, which would stay out of sight and locked all day in students’ backpacks. Critics said they were too extreme and that the locking mechanism can easily be hacked, among other concerns.

“I’d like the school to stay with the current process,” Archie Williams High School parent Ivy Lavie said. “The Yondr pouches would be too much, too soon, and would present extra work for teachers.”

Lavie also said “the collaborative process” that has developed among the school, students and parents over the past year in the current program “would be lost” if the locking pouches were used.

The pouch plan would force teachers to lock the devices in the morning and unlock them at the end of the day, Redwood High School math teacher Heather Curtaz said.

“The amount of extra work with Yondr would be so overwhelming,” she said. “We would be missing class time to get it done.”

Josh Palmateer, senior class president at Archie Williams High School, said he did an informal survey of his peers, and almost all rejected the Yondr pouches.

“Of the people I talked to, 98% don’t want it,” Palmateer said. “The caddies work well if the teachers monitor them.”

Cameryn Smith, student government president at Redwood High School, agreed.

“We do not support the use of Yondr,” Smith said. “We think it’s essential for students at Redwood to learn how to self-regulate. In college, there will be no restrictions and no regulation. If students don’t learn to self-regulate now, when are they going to learn?”

Trustee Cynthia Roenisch reacted strongly to one commenter who said many teachers are not strictly monitoring the caddies and that some caddies are only half-filled during classes.

“I am stunned to hear teachers are not enforcing this consistently,” she said. “We need to tell teachers this is non-negotiable.”

She and the other trustees pointed to evidence that constant distraction from cellphones not only leads to poor academic performance, but also undermines focus and social connections with others. She suggested that the student leaders arrange events such as “phone-free Fridays” to “see how good it could be to go without your phone for seven hours.”

The students might find they “could get an endorphin boost from eye contact” instead of from the constant scrolling on social media, Roenisch said.

Trustee Emily Uhlhorn said the current program is “working pretty well” and seemed to be improving as the year went on.

“People are not really sure yet that they’ll be better without their phones,” Uhlhorn said.

Tara Taupier, district superintendent, said the nonstop phone scrolling by students is “an addiction” that needs to end. She said she would resend instructions for the current program to school administrators and teachers to make sure they understand it is a top priority.

Trustee Karen Loebbaka said the message to students needs to be: “Please comply with the rules and policies. They are for you.”

According to comments at the meeting, the district’s current cellphone restrictions would be enough to comply with a state law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September. The law, called the Phone-free Schools Act, requires every school district, charter school and county office of education to develop policies on limits by July 1, 2026.