Track A: the fastest route
The lunch rule comes from a document the Commissioner of Education issued and can rewrite. No new law is needed. What does not exist is a comment docket to file into, so the first thing this page does is tell you that plainly, rather than sending you to a process that is not there.
New Jersey has a formal public comment process, and it is a good one: a proposed rule is published in the New Jersey Register, the public gets 60 days to comment in writing, and the agency has to publish a response to what it received.source None of it applied here.
That process attaches to rules, the regulations in Title 6A of the New Jersey Administrative Code, which the State Board adopts.source This document is guidance, issued by the Commissioner because the statute told him to: the Commissioner of Education shall develop guidelines applicable to students enrolled in grades kindergarten through 12.s.2.a
It was never proposed as a rule, so there was never a comment period, a docket, or a response obligation.
We looked for one. We read the guidance, the FAQs, both broadcasts that transmitted them, the Department’s proposed-rules page and its public notices index. None of them contains a comment mechanism. The only inbound address NJDOE ever published for this subject is an email line for questions.source
All three were fetched and checked on 6 September 2026. If one of them bounces, tell us and we will correct this page.
Dr. Lily Laux is the Commissioner of Education. She was nominated by Governor Sherrill and confirmed by the Senate in February 2026, after the January 2026 guidance was issued by her predecessor. The guidance is the Commissioner's own document to revise.sourcesource
When NJDOE sent the revised guidance to districts in January 2026, the transmittal gave one address: “Questions regarding the updated Guidelines may be directed to PhoneFreeSchools@doe.nj.gov.” Read that word carefully: questions, not comments. It is an implementation help line, and nothing published promises that policy feedback sent there is logged or answered. It is still the address the Department itself attached to this subject.source
The State Board accepts written comment from anyone who cannot attend a testimony session. The Board did not adopt this guidance and cannot amend it, but its members are the people the Commissioner answers to in public, and comment sent here is on the record.source
Three times a year, in January, May and September, the State Board of Education holds an open topic public testimony session, where a member of the public may speak on any educational topic at all.source That is the one scheduled, on-the-record opportunity in this whole story to stand up and say this to the state’s education leadership.
A testimony notice is issued at least two weeks before a meeting, so the way not to miss one is to subscribe to the Board’s agenda notices and watch for it. Sessions are not held every month.source
An interested person may petition an agency to adopt a new rule, or amend or repeal any existing rule.s.52:14B-4(f)
adopt a new rule or amend or repeal an existing rule set forth in Title 6A6A:6-4.1(a)
The device guidance is not in Title 6A. There is no rule there to amend.
So a petition cannot ask the State Board to change the guidance. The procedure is real: a form or an email, and then 60 days for the Board to deny the petition with a written statement of its reasons, grant it and start rulemaking, or refer it for further deliberation, with notice published in the New Jersey Register either way.6A:6-4.1 to 4.2 It simply does not reach this document.
What a petition could ask for is that the Board adopt a new Title 6A rule on student device policies. If it were granted, the subject would move out of non-binding guidance and into the full process: Register publication, a 60-day comment period, public testimony, and a published response to every comment.source That is a serious, slow, procedural step, and it is not the first thing anybody should do. It is worth knowing it exists.
The State Board has a non-voting student representative who serves for twelve months and presents to the Board at every public meeting.source They are the Board’s designated liaison to students, and the association that elects them invites students to get in touch and share concerns directly.source
The seat is not filled by applying to NJDOE. It is elected each January by the New Jersey Association of Student Councils as one of its State Officers, for a term running July to June. If your school has a student council, that is the door.
We are not printing the current representative’s name or email here. They are a high school student, and a page that routes campaign mail to a named minor is not something we are willing to publish. Their name is on the Department’s page if you want it, and NJASC can put you in touch.
This is deliberately not a form letter, and you should not send it as one. Offices that receive four hundred identical emails log them as one campaign with a number attached; four hundred different emails get read as four hundred people. The bracketed parts are the point of the exercise.
It concedes the enforcement problem on purpose. A message that pretends the hard part is easy tells the reader you have not thought about their job.
Change this before you send it. Fill in every square bracket, delete the paragraph markers, and rewrite at least one paragraph in your own words: the one about your own school matters more than everything else in the message. If you can say something specific and true that nobody else could say, lead with it and cut something else to make room.
Subject: Request to revise the guidance on student use of internet-enabled devices Dear Commissioner Laux, I am a [student in grade __ / parent of a student / teacher] in the [name] school district, in [name] County. I am writing about the Department's Guidance for Schools on Student Use of Internet-Enabled Devices and the accompanying FAQs. I am asking the Department to revise the guidance so that on-campus lunch, study hall and passing time are treated as non-instructional time and fall outside the bell-to-bell restriction. I am not disputing the Department's authority. P.L. 2025, c. 195 directs the Commissioner to develop guidelines prohibiting "non-academic use of an internet-enabled device on school grounds during the school day," and that delegation is broad. My point is narrower: the statute does not use the words lunch, study hall or passing time anywhere in its text. The bell-to-bell reading is one available construction of "during the school day," not the only one. That is why it can be revised without new legislation. The reason I think the narrower reading is better is that the Department has already drawn this line elsewhere. The FAQs permit students to use their devices on a school bus, and permit use during an off-campus open lunch period. Both of those are unstructured, non-instructional time. The distinction the current guidance turns on is where a student is standing, not whether instruction is taking place. I understand this is harder than it sounds in a school using locked pouches, where a lunch exception would mean unlocking and relocking hundreds of devices inside a short window. That is a real operational problem and I am not going to pretend it is not. [Say what you think would work in your own school: a designated area, a different storage method, a pilot in a small number of districts.] [Replace this paragraph with one or two sentences only you can write: what your lunch period is actually like, what you use your device for, what happened on a day you needed it. This is the part that makes the message yours, and it is the part a staffer quotes to their boss.] I have followed my school's policy and I will keep following it. I am writing because I think the line is in the wrong place, not because I want a way around it. Thank you for your time and for considering this. Sincerely, [Your name, or leave this out if you would rather not give it] [Your town], New Jersey [Your school district, if you are comfortable naming it]