“That’s a Long Half Hour for a Parent”

Earlier this year, when the Kansas House Education Committee introduced a bill that would require all school districts in the state to prohibit the use of cellphones during school hours, Kim Whitman, a mother of two and co-founder of the Phone-Free Schools Movement, reached out to her state representative to get a sense of whether she planned to support it. Much to the contrary, the legislator “kind of lost it,” Whitman told me, emotionally denouncing any bill that wouldn’t allow her to maintain contact with her children throughout the school day. Floating the possibility that her kids could still keep phones in their lockers did little to appease her, “because then she wouldn’t know which specific classroom they were in, in case there was an active shooter,” Whitman said. “So that’s what we’re dealing with.”