The new student representative to the Fairfax County School Board is urging school leaders to enforce consistent standards, now that new restrictions on student phone use are being rolled out countywide.
Starting with the upcoming 2025-2026 school year, Fairfax County Public Schools will prohibit students in all grades from using their cell phones at any point during the day — with the exception of high school students during lunch. Teachers can also no longer incorporate phones into instructional activities.
At the school board’s meeting on July 17, its last before an August recess, Faith Hailu Mekonen told members that inconsistency in enforcement will lead to resentment among the student body and potentially to conflicts at school.
“It’s hard to follow the rules when the expectations change from one classroom to the next,” Mekonen said.
She laid out a series of questions for school officials to address before the start of classes on Aug 18, including:
- “What measures are being put in place to ensure this policy is applied consistently across all high schools?”
- “Will there be clear guidance to staff?”
- “Will students be given a clear understanding of what to expect, no matter what school they attend or what teacher they have?”
Mekonen, a rising senior at South County High School, was elected earlier this year by the Student Advisory Council to serve as student representative on the school board for 2025-2026. In the position, she can participate in discussions but doesn’t have a vote.
If student concerns about consistency in the phone policy sound familiar, it’s because they are. Mekonen’s predecessor, 2024-2025 student representative Megan Sawant, raised the same issue last December.
At the time, FCPS was conducting a phone-free pilot program that required students at select middle and high schools to place their cell phones in pouches or central storage lockers during classes. Enforcement, however, varied among individual teachers.
Sawant told the school board that the policy then in place “should be standardized across classes in the same school, with teachers and administration being on the same page.”
“It should be consistent,” Sawant said then. “School-wide, classroom to classroom, students should be expecting the same thing of where they should store their phones and how teachers are reinforcing that.”
In her July 17 remarks, Mekonen said students reported rampant inconsistency during the pilot program.
“Implementation varied widely across schools and even within the same school,” she said. “Some teachers enforced the rule strictly, while others are more lenient. This creates confusion, frustration and a sense of unfairness among students.”
FCPS introduced the pilot last year as the school board began exploring tighter phone restrictions. Previously, high school students weren’t allowed to use phones in class, but could use them at other times during the school day. Elementary and middle school students were barred from using cell phones at any point during the school day.
The school board voted 9-3 on May 8 to revise the cell phone policy, expanding restrictions on high school students to include “passing” periods between classes. However, it still allows phone usage at lunchtime.
Some school board members, state education officials and lawmakers argued that the lunchtime-use exception violates the spirit of legislation passed earlier in the year by the General Assembly.
Championed in the House by Del. Sam Rasoul and in the Senate by local Sen. Stella Pekarsky, the bill directed local school boards to restrict student cell phone possession and usage “to the fullest extent possible” during the regular school day. It essentially codified guidance issued last year by the Virginia Department of Education in response to an executive order from Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
“The law says that phones are to be restricted after the first bell of the day and until the last of the day — bell-to-bell,” Hunter Mill District School Board Representative Melanie Meren told WTOP after the vote. “In effect, FCPS will not be compliant with the law.”
A majority of school board members, however, felt the revised policy comported with the law’s language.
Mekonen began her one-year term as student representative at the school board’s July 10 meeting, saying she hoped to build on what had come before her.
“Policies that impact students should never be made without our input,” she said at that meeting. “It’s my responsibility to ensure perspectives are heard.”
