(Photo by Daniel de la Hoz/Getty Images)
The beauty of South Dakota’s public school system is that each school district is different. Each has its own funding challenges. Some may put an emphasis on college preparation while others may seek to get students ready for the workforce. The beauty of local control is that it allows the school district patrons, through their school board, to decide how students should be educated.
That individuality is apparent in the way districts have approached student use of cellphones in the classroom. According to a South Dakota Searchlight survey and analysis of school district policies, about 60% of school districts in the state restrict cellphone use for at least part of the school day. About a third of districts take the further step of locking away students’ cellphones for at least a portion of the day.
While some schools may restrict student cellphone use in an effort to keep them from being distractions, in Wilmot the students are allowed to keep their phones as a way to teach them a lesson in responsibility. This contrasts quite a bit with the policy in other districts including Dupree, where high school students are required to put their cellphones in containers during the school day.
It’s that kind of difference, from school district to school district, that helps reflect the philosophy of educators, the needs of the individual communities and the strength of local control.
“There’s never going to be a one-size-fits-all,” said Dupree School District superintendent Brent Mareska.
Well, hold the phone.
One policy for every school district is exactly what three of the five candidates for governor are proposing. U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson, a Republican candidate for governor, said in a South Dakota Searchlight story that he would back a statewide prohibition on student access to cellphones during classes.
“The state government setting a broad-stroke policy and then having the execution of that strategy and management done at the local level will give us the best of both worlds,” Johnson said.
Of course, one of those worlds, in Pierre, would set the policy for all the school districts. Those districts, whether they like it or not, would have to carry it out, without regard for their current cellphone policy. A policy that may be working just fine for them.
South Dakota House Speaker Jon Hansen, another Republican candidate, would also support a statewide policy as a way for students to focus “on learning, not on distractions.” Democrat Robert Arnold, a 20-year-old college student who plans to run for governor, said a statewide policy would benefit students.
Another Republican candidate, Aberdeen businessman Toby Doeden, said the decision on cellphone policy should be left up to school boards, though his approach seems more like a Mafia don than a governor: “As governor, I would absolutely lean on our local school boards to ban cellphones from the classroom.”
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While Doeden would make school districts an offer they can’t refuse, Gov. Larry Rhoden, who has yet to declare his candidacy, is quizzing school leaders about whether they want their policy to come from the local level or the state. Some schools may welcome a state law, allowing them to put what could be an unpopular policy in place, all the while laying the blame at the feet of the Legislature.
Judging by the performance of the Legislature in 2025, it would be wise to leave decisions about education to school districts. A completely unscientific search of the Legislative Research Council website found that the Legislature considered 59 education bills this year. Among them were such winners as a failed requirement to display and add to the curriculum the Ten Commandments, a withdrawn effort to defund the Huron School District because of its bathroom policy, and a failed requirement to display the state seal.
A track record like that doesn’t inspire confidence in a Legislature or a governor who wants to make a one-size-fits-all cellphone policy. Obviously school districts are getting by just fine without a mandate from the state about how to regulate cellphones in the classroom. That’s how local control is supposed to work.