The Boulder Valley school board heard in an update at its Tuesday meeting that the ban on high school students using cell phones throughout the school day is producing positive results more quickly than expected.

Boulder Valley previously required high school students to put away their phones during class, but didn’t restrict them during lunch, off periods and passing periods. At elementary and middle schools, the district had already required that cell phones be silenced and stowed away all day. The new high school policy, approved by the board in November, went into effect in January.

Along with cell phones, the new policy restricts smart watches and headphones. While the policy doesn’t ban personal laptops, which many students bring to school instead of the district-issued Chromebooks, it does direct students not to use their laptops “to access social media or other applications unrelated to specific academic tasks.”

Students with a documented need for a phone for medical reasons, such as reminders to take medication, are exempt. Teachers also may make an exception if a personal device is needed for an educational reason.

At Tuesday’s meeting, principals at Broomfield and Centaurus high schools provided feedback. With a goal of focusing on creating connection, both schools added games like ping pong, air hockey and foosball to give students more options during lunch and off periods.

“Our focus was on the positive aspects and how students could be involved in the process,” Broomfield High Principal Ginger Ramsey said.

She said the school started with only collecting phones that were out during class in January, then moved to collecting phones out in common areas in February. In the last couple of months, she reported seeing more student conversations, more students using free time to study and more student engagement in class discussions. The ping pong table, she added, gets constant use.

“They are enjoying playing a little bit,” she said.

Centaurus Principal Carlyn Carroll said student leaders came up with the plan to add games and movies in the student center, as well as asking the school to start with reminders while students built new habits. Students, she added, are now organizing lunch basketball scrimmages with teachers and are starting a ping pong club.

“Students said, ‘We want to play together,’ “ she said. “This process was really about allowing student leadership to lead the way. Was this hard? Yes, it was really hard. But there was power to give space for student voice.”

The school gave reminders in January, then moved to taking phones for a day starting in February. Out of the school’s 1,545 students, Carroll said, administrators and teachers are collecting fewer than 20 phones a day.

Centaurus social studies teacher Jeff Jackson, who regularly plays ping pong with students, is a fan of the new policy.

He said having a clear policy makes it easier for teachers to enforce. Students also are more focused in class with a universal ban since they can’t pull out their phones to quickly check a message, then get distracted. More importantly, he said, the school has become “louder and more vibrant” as students talk more instead of staring at phones.

“They’re hanging out with each other,” he said. “Communicating is a skill you have to build. This provides different opportunities.”

Centaurus students playing games during lunch on Tuesday gave the new cell policy mixed reviews. Some panned it as “stupid” or “pointless,” saying there are still teachers who don’t enforce the no-phone rules during class. Others said they’ve seen both benefits and drawbacks.

Senior Lily Adams said it’s easier to stay engaged in class, but her friend group hasn’t become more social because they already liked to chat while hanging out during lunch. Setting up lunch plans is more challenging without phones, the students said. While they tried to use a Google doc on their laptops to create a group chat, it’s not really working.

Classmate Finn Feldman said ditching phones created a fear that students won’t have access to their parents if something bad happens. He also misses listening to music when working independently in class, doesn’t like the inconvenience of needing to leave school to schedule appointments and spends more time on his phone after school.

“Now at home, I’m like, ‘I need my screen time,’” he said.

Senior Georgia Sinkey, who was playing a card game with her friends during lunch, said she’s good with putting phones away during class but would prefer to have them allowed during lunch and passing periods. She and her friends said they use their phones to check work and bus schedules, take quick notes in the Notes app and text parents — all things that aren’t as easy to accomplish on their slow-to-start Chromebooks.

“It makes me more productive in class, but it can be inconvenient to not allow them at all,” Sinkey said.

Principals said they’re still working on areas that include consistent implementation of the policy by adults, finding a balance between supporting young adults and setting additional rules, meeting student needs for quieter spaces, and teaching better habits instead of using punitive consequences.

“As a (principal) group, our biggest issue is time,” Ramsey said. “The enforcement and monitoring of this policy creates a need for supervision and reinforcement.”