We still don’t know how much LAUSD spent on its cellphone ban

After the Los Angeles Unified School District adopted a landmark policy to get cellphones out of classrooms last year, California and more than two dozen states followed suit. But how the district spent up to $7 million to do so remains unclear, despite LAist’s repeated requests for the district to provide its accounting.

LAist first asked for details about how the millions of allocated dollars were spent about a week before the ban was set to take effect in February.

A district spokesperson said in a Feb. 18 statement that about half of schools chose to purchase magnetic pouches or other devices to enforce the ban. The remaining schools planned to use the cost-free “honor system” and require students to keep their phones turned off in their backpacks.

The spokesperson said additional details requested by LAist at that time, including a cost breakdown, were the responsibility of staff members busy managing the district’s response to rainstorms hitting Southern California that month.

In the months since, LAist made five follow-up requests asking district officials to provide the public records requested. The district has yet to provide details on how millions in taxpayer money earmarked for the cellphone ban were allocated.

How LAUSD joined the cellphone ban movement

The district’s June 2024 adoption of the cellphone ban made national headlines. Three months later, California passed a law that requires all school districts to enact policies to limit student cellphone use by July 2026. As of July 2025, at least 30 states have approved similar measures.

While there was growing consensus that cellphones should be put away during school hours, how to do it was not settled in the LAUSD mandate.

Instead, schools were expected to come up with their own rollout plan based on community input. If the schools wanted to purchase locking magnetic or Velcro pouches, lockers or other devices they were instructed to submit their orders to the district’s Division of School Operations.

LAUSD educators told the school board and LAist it’d become a burden to constantly tell students to stow their phones, earbuds, smartwatches and other devices during the day.

“The time I have spent policing phone use could have been better spent on helping students recover from COVID learning loss through reading, essay writing and group projects,” Malinda Marcus, an English teacher at Mulholland Middle School’s robotics magnet program, told the board in June 2024 as the issue was debated.

Why does this money matter?

Ultimately, the district budgeted for a one-time allocation of $7 million to implement the policy, which represents just .04% of the district’s $18.4 billion budget last school year. How LAUSD managed its cellphone funds could inform the many other districts looking to implement a similar ban, and help the public better understand the return on investment.

Listen • 46:11

Listen • 46:11

Did the cellphone ban in high schools work?

On February 18th, 2025, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest public school district in the country, implemented an all-day cell phone ban for its students. Now that it’s the end of the school year, we head to Venice High School to see how the ban actually went.

The cellphone policy spending comes at a time of declining enrollment, diminishing reserves and uncertain federal funding.

In June, LAUSD’s board approved a plan to cut costs, including through potential school closures and layoffs, in the 2026-27 and 2027-28 school years.

Hard choices are needed under a state law that requires districts to create a “fiscal stabilization plan” when they are spending more money than they bring in and are at risk of not being able to meet their financial obligations within three years.

The details of our records requests

Californians have the right to access records about “the conduct of the people’s business.”

California public records law directs agencies to “make the records promptly available,” including being “open to inspection at all times during the office hours of a state or local agency.”

After our initial request in February, LAist followed up with district officials in April with a request for records that would show how much the district actually spent implementing the ban. We asked LAUSD to provide contracts, proposals or invoices related to the implementation of the cellphone policy.

District staff acknowledged LAist’s request by email and extended the timeline to provide a response twice, but in three months have yet to provide any records.

How do public records requests work in LAUSD?

An LAUSD spokesperson said in a statement that the district received more than 2,000 Public Records Act “submissions” in 2024.

LAUSD funnels requests for information under the California Public Records Act to staff members within the district’s Office of the General Counsel. The district must accept verbal requests, but encourages people to submit requests to the “PRA Unit” in writing. 

From there the PRA Unit:

• Identifies the record or records and who within the district is responsible for it. 
• Reviews the record or records to see if they are relevant to the request, can legally be released or contain privileged information. “This is not merely a clerical task, as it involves careful review and analysis of each page of a given record,” the spokesperson wrote.
• Makes the responsive records available either electronically or physically to the person who requested them.

The district has fulfilled some of LAist’s public records requests in the past. For example, the district provided data about preschool enrollment in December 2024, about a month after it was first requested.

What are LAUSD's other public records challenges?

Multiple other requests remain unfulfilled.

LAist asked for public records in February related to the district’s spending on arts education after a group of district families and a former superintendent filed a lawsuit. They accused LAUSD of misspending millions of dollars from a voter-approved ballot measure to expand arts education statewide.

District staff said it was reviewing “potentially responsive” records in May, but did not provide an update by June 30, the estimate given in the last email sent to watchdog correspondent Jordan Rynning. The Los Angeles Times reported seeking similar records for more than a year.

In June, the First Amendment Coalition called on LAUSD to release records related to employee misconduct to a freelance journalist.

According to the nonprofit, the district failed to determine whether the records even existed for nearly a year and then requested $8,000 to continue its search for documents.

“They're effectively denying the request and avoiding accountability altogether by making the records prohibitively expensive to receive,”  Annie Cappetta, a former legal fellow at the organization, told LAist.

LAist sent district representatives a list of questions related to each of the unfilled public records requests named in this story. We received a statement in response that outlined the workflow for providing records, but did not address our specific requests.

“Although the PRA Unit prides itself on responsiveness, the extremely high volume of PRA requests and subsequent due diligence required often precludes the immediate turn-around time desired by many of the requesters,” the Los Angeles Unified spokesperson wrote. They also asked that “official statements of the district” not be attributed to a single individual.

The spokesperson directed LAist to its PRA Unit for the status of individual requests.

The last email LAist got from that office regarding its request for information about the cellphone policy — dated May 8 — said records or an updated timeline would be provided by June 20.