I'm also confused by stories that imply that kids were allowed to use their phones during class.

The local schools I'm familiar with allowed phones in backpacks, but if you got caught using it during class there were consequences.

Enforcement was never perfect. Some teachers didn't care, some students were sneaky enough to not get caught. Yet the consequences seemed to keep the kids afraid of using phones for the most part (from what I've been told, obviously I wasn't sitting with them in class).

Some of these articles are written like entire classrooms were just scrolling their phones during class? I don't get it. Was there just a total lack of enforcement?