Phones are down and test scores are up as students across Santa Barbara County return to school.

The school year started Wednesday for the Santa Barbara Unified School District, and with it comes new teachers, classrooms and friends. It also comes with new rules for students — specifically about cellphones.

La Colina Junior High School‘s new cellphone policy requires students to keep their phones in a signal-blocking bag for the entire school day.

Principal Jennifer Foster said the policy is called “off and away, all day.” The new rule states that students must keep their phones in their bags from 8:50 a.m. to 3:05 p.m. 

La Colina implemented a similar rule last year, requiring students to keep their devices in areas called phone hotels when they were in class. The new rule covers cellphones, smartwatches, earbuds and other electronics.

Foster said the new rule is not a ban, but a way to help kids focus more and interact with their fellow students. She said teachers noticed a difference in attention just by having the students’ phones put away during class.

“Now we want to expand on that to at break (and) lunch,” Foster said. “Students can just interact and learn how to talk … with their peers and meet new people. And, you know, that’s really what it’s all about in junior high.”

Even though students must place their phones in signal-blocking bags, the phones are still accessible in case of an emergency. Foster said school officials had the option of bags that locked throughout the day, but they understood parent concerns about being able to reach their children in certain situations or when they need to coordinate pickups.

Hilda Maldonado, the district’s superintendent, said the expansion of last year’s policy was in response to parent requests, and that the district hopes to purchase bags in the future with the support of the community.

“We’ll probably continue to ask people to help us with the purchase of pouches,” Maldonado said. “We know that it’s a big expense — about $8 to $10 per pouch. Because we continue to think about expanding it, it’ll be an ongoing cost.”

District high schools implemented an “off and away” program a few years ago.

At Harding University Partnership School, the focus of the first day Wednesday was on introducing students to their new teachers and classmates.

Among the students were third-graders Benjamin File and Dominic Antonio Cruz. File said his favorite subject at school is music, and he is looking forward to the singing program. Cruz said his favorite class is math, and his favorite part of the first day of school was decorating his name tag.

In another class, students played a game called Four Corners, where they ran across the classroom to indicate their favorite food, music or color.

“The first few days are always nerve-racking for students, and they’re very excited,” said Natalie Ramirez, who teaches sixth grade at Harding. “(There is) a lot of energy, a lot of ‘getting to know you’ games, a lot of setting expectations and being really transparent with kind of how we do things at Harding and how we do things in sixth grade.”

Harding Principal Veronica Binkley said the school is especially proud of its test scores in math and reading, which increased during the past year.

Students who can read at or above their grade level rose from 41% to 51%. Additionally, student math scores increased from 32% testing at their grade level to 46%.

Binkley credited the increases to a collaboration between Harding University and researchers at UC Santa Barbara and the Gevirtz School. She explained that faculty at Harding collaborate with the Gevirtz School and its director of outreach, Lilly Garcia, to find new ways to help students.  

“Lilly and I work together to find the gaps in what our kids need, and we fill them with some program that they offer,” Binkley said.

The new teaching methods allow the students to work in small groups and explore different ways to read and do math. The goal is to allow kids to see new ways to solve problems and encourage each other.

“It’s kids learning from kids,” Garcia said. “Kids voicing their opinions, kids showing what they’re doing in various different ways. So, it’s encouraging the discourse, so that they’re co-learners. They can learn from each other.”