The rule should stop where instruction stops.

The Department’s FAQs say students may use their devices on school buses, unless the district restricts it further.^Q14 They say a student who leaves campus for an open lunch period should be permitted to use a personal device, and must store it again on returning.^Q15 They say devices may be used before and after the school day, and at activities held outside school hours.^Q2Q10

Every one of those is unstructured time in which no instruction is happening. So is on-campus lunch. So is study hall. So are the few minutes between classes. Those three are prohibited.^Q8

What separates the permitted list from the prohibited one is not whether teaching is going on. It is where the student is standing, and what the clock says. A student who leaves campus for lunch may use a phone; the same student, in the same lunch period, eating in the cafeteria, may not.

The bus example is the sharpest, because buses are named in the statute as something a board’s policy is about.^s.2.d The Department could have extended the prohibition there and did not; its guidance says only that boards of education may wish to consider including provisions in their policy for limiting student use of internet enabled devices on school buses^{Considerations for Limiting}. So the Department has already exercised judgment about which non-instructional periods to cover. Bell-to-bell is where that judgment landed, not a boundary the statute fixed.

This argument does not ask anyone to accept our reading of the statute or our view of the research. It asks the Department to apply the reasoning it already used for buses and off-campus lunch to a cafeteria.

The statute directs the Commissioner to develop guidelines that prohibit non-academic use of an internet-enabled device on school grounds during the school day^s.2.b(2). The words lunch, study hall and passing do not appear anywhere in it.^{full text}

Bell-to-bell is defined in NJDOE’s own Key Terms, the page shown at the top of this one. It is that definition, not the statute, which says the window includes time in between class periods and lunch^{Key Terms}. The FAQs then apply it.^Q8

What we are not saying. We are not saying NJDOE overstepped. The delegation is broad, and during the school day can fairly be read to include lunch. An argument that the Department acted beyond its authority would lose, and making it would make the change harder to grant, not easier.

What we are saying. The statute left room for a narrower reading, one that ties the prohibition to the periods when instruction is happening. Because the guidelines belong to the Commissioner, that narrower reading can be adopted without the Legislature doing anything at all.^s.2.a

The statute required the Commissioner to consult stakeholders in the education community:

…the commissioner shall consult with interested stakeholders in the education community including, but not limited to, the New Jersey Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the New Jersey School Boards Association, the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association, and the New Jersey Association of School Administrators…^s.2.c

All five are associations of adults who work in or govern schools. No student organisation is named. The phrase including, but not limited to means the Commissioner was free to consult students as well; the statute simply did not require it.

Then the guidance turns to districts and tells them to give students and families opportunities to ask questions and give feedback, including through digital forms, and to revisit and update the policy annually to reflect that feedback.^{Communicating Policy}

So student input is wanted, but it is collected after the decision, at district level, about a policy the district is not permitted to change in the direction students are asking for.

The guidelines must authorise student device use on a case-by-case basis for a student caregiver who is routinely responsible for the care or well-being of a family member, upon approval from a principal, chief school administrator, or their designees, which may include a school psychologist, school social worker, or school counselor^s.2.b(5)(d). The statute also carves out IEP and 504 accommodations, health plans, translation services, and cases where no reasonable alternative exists.^s.2.b(5)

The Legislature did not treat the school day as a sealed box. It accepted that some students have obligations that do not pause at the first bell, and wrote a process for them.

We are not claiming that wanting to message a friend at lunch is comparable to caring for a relative. The point is narrower than that: the principle that the school day must accommodate the rest of a student’s life is already in the statute. What is being argued about is where that line sits, not whether one exists.