When Gov. Kelly Ayotte called on the state legislature to pass a school phone ban in January, the pivotal question wasn’t whether the widely popular policy would pass but how far it would go.

This week, the answer became clearer: New Hampshire appears poised to take among the most aggressive approaches to phone use in the country, prohibiting personal electronic devices throughout the school day, rather than solely during instructional time.

Just six states — New York, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma and South Carolina — have instituted so-called bell-to-bell bans in recent years, according to the legislative tracking website Ballotpedia. Six other states prohibit phone use during class, but not during other portions of the day, such as at lunch and recess.

Though Ayotte called for a bell-to-bell ban in the proposed budget she released in February, the House and Senate initially passed bills that prohibited phones during instructional time only.

This week, however, the House Education Policy and Administration Committee amended the Senate’s version of the bill to include the bell-to-bell provision, a change which Ayotte applauded.

“I’m very supportive of what the House did,” she said Wednesday.

The amended bill still has to pass the full House and return to the Senate, but there appears to be widespread support from members of both parties for the all-day prohibition. Sen. Ruth Ward, the chair of the Senate Education Committee, did not respond to a request for comment on the amended bill.

The law, which will likely take effect prior to next school year, will prompt major changes for many school districts. An informal survey of Concord-area schools conducted by the Concord Monitor last September found that just one school, Rundlett Middle School in Concord, currently prohibits phones all day. Most other schools have policies barring devices only during class.

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At the time of the survey, lawmakers from both parties argued phone policies were best left to local school districts. But several months later, the thinking on the role of state government in legislating school phone use has evolved, prompted by increasingly conclusive research about the negative effect of the technology on children’s mental health and learning.

“We had people sit right here that were former educators — we had a current superintendent, we even had a student — and they were just begging us to come in and make a law up here in Concord saying no more cell phones,” said Rep. Melissa Litchfield, a Brentwood Republican who brought the bell-to-bell amendment this week.

Lawmakers and educators have focused in particular on a desire to unburden school leaders and teachers of the responsibility of coming up with and enforcing policies that would likely vary from district to district, prompting community debate.

“I talked to many teachers about the cell phone issue and banning the cell phones in the schools,” Ayotte said. “They didn't want to be the police.”

School phone bans have emerged as the rare issue that has garnered widespread bipartisan agreement. Nationally, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York have been among the most vocal elected officials advocating for the policy.

In New Hampshire, the leader of the state’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association, has joined Ayotte in backing a bell-to-bell ban, citing a nationwide survey that found 83% of the union’s members support prohibiting phones for the whole day.

“NEA-New Hampshire remains in favor of a bell-to-bell prohibition on the use of cell phones, which will help ensure students receive the maximum educational benefit during the school day, both academically and socially,” union president Megan Tuttle said in a statement Friday.

A semblance of a partisan debate, however, did break out on the House committee over the bell-to-bell amendment this week. Two Democratic members of the committee said they didn’t support a bell-to-bell ban at all, arguing it would infringe upon local control.

“I feel as though each district should be able to determine what's in their best interest,” said Democratic Rep. Loren Selig of Durham. “What Newcastle needs, where they only have an elementary school, is going to be far different than what Manchester needs for all sorts of reasons.”

Though most of Selig’s fellow Democrats expressed support for a bell-to-bell ban, all the Democratic members ultimately voted against the amendment, primarily because the bill didn’t include a carve-out for instructional purposes.

“If a class was doing a unit on plants and the teacher wanted to take the students outside, take pictures of plants and identify them, we wanted that teacher to have the ability to be able to tell the class that they could take their cell phones,” Rep. Patricia Cornell of Manchester said in an interview.

The Republican majority on the committee ultimately rejected the request for an exception, arguing that it would cause “additional problems,” particularly surrounding accessing phones during the day.

Following the committee vote, Rep. Cornell, the ranking Democrat on the committee, clarified that her caucus remained “in favor” of the bill, including the bell-to-bell ban, despite opposing the amendment.

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.