Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with the Stanford Graduate School of Education, today released a free toolkit to help schools design cell phone policies that support student well-being, engagement, and belonging. The project was funded by a grant from the Young Futures Call Me Maybe Challenge, which provided funding to support innovative solutions that help young people, families and educators navigate the role of phones in schools by putting students at the center.
“We are proud to share the work these three schools undertook last year to rethink their cell phone policies. Each school followed its own path, shaped by its own community and needs, because we believe context matters: a policy that works for one school won’t necessarily work for another,” said Kimberly Tsai, Director of Programs at Challenge Success. “What these schools have in common is that they treated students as true partners in the process, not just people the policy would affect. That’s the throughline we hope other schools take from this toolkit: when you center student voice and keep well-being, belonging, and engagement as your goal, you end up with policies that actually work for the students and classrooms they’re meant to serve.”
Challenge Success will host a free webinar on October 28, 2026, featuring members of the teams at the partner schools. Registrants who cannot attend live will receive the recording.