Current Policy
What the rules actually say — at the State Capitol, at 360 Colborne, and in your student's school building.
Last verified: June 2026. This site's automated monitor checks the source pages weekly and flags changes.
How the layers fit together
School technology rules in Minnesota are set at three levels, and knowing which level controls what is the key to changing any of it:
| Level | Who decides | What it controls today |
|---|---|---|
| State law | Minnesota Legislature | Sets the floor. Minn. Stat. § 121A.73 required every district to adopt a cell phone policy by March 15, 2025 — but (so far) lets each district decide what the policy says. |
| District policy | SPPS Board of Education | Policy 550.00, "Cellular Phones and Personal Electronic Devices" (adopted February 2025): phones off and out of sight during the school day, districtwide. Policy 520.00, "Technology Usage & Safety," governs the district's own devices. |
| School procedures | Each principal & site council | Implementation details — lunch and passing time, storage, enforcement, and any high-school exceptions. This is why rules differ between buildings (KARE 11). |
The practical takeaway: if you want stronger rules at your child's school, the principal and site council can act tomorrow. If you want consistency across Saint Paul, that's the school board. If you want consistency across Minnesota, that's the Legislature.
What Minnesota law requires
Minn. Stat. § 121A.73 made Minnesota one of the states that mandates a local policy without dictating its content. That may be about to change: SF 508 / HF 2516, pending in the 2026 session, would ban phones and smartwatches entirely for grades K–8 and in classrooms for grades 9–12, statewide, starting in 2026–27 (KAXE). Twenty-six states already require districts to ban or limit phones (Ballotpedia tracker). Minnesota currently mandates less than many of them.
What SPPS policy says
The board-approved policy, in effect since fall 2025, requires personal electronic devices to be turned off and out of sight during the school day — left at home, in a locker, or off in a backpack — with exceptions for documented medical monitoring and emergencies. Each school publishes its own implementation procedures. The board's stated rationale when it passed the policy: academic performance and student mental health (KARE 11, Bring Me The News).
What the policy doesn't cover. The 2025 policy governs students' personal devices. It says nothing about the district-issued iPad on every desk: which apps are on it, how much of the school day is spent on it, what data it collects, or whether its use is evaluated against learning outcomes. A decade after the 1:1 rollout, the evidence the district itself cites is a student perception survey, not a learning-outcomes review (SPPS Technology Services); if a recurring public evaluation exists, we haven't found it — and you can request one yourself. That gap — not the phone policy — is where SPPS most lags the districts on our comparison page.
Primary sources
- SPPS Board Policies & Procedures — the district's official policy library, including Policy 550.00 (Cellular Phones and Personal Electronic Devices) and Policy 520.00 (Technology Usage & Safety)
- SPPS Rights & Responsibilities handbook — how the rules are communicated to families
- Minn. Stat. § 121A.73 — the state cell phone policy mandate
How this page stays current
A weekly automated job fetches the SPPS policy pages and the Minnesota statute above, compares them to stored snapshots, and opens an alert when anything changes — so updates here follow district and state changes within days, not years. The monitoring code is public.