After years of debate, the state legislature is taking action to create rules around cell phone use in schools.

This week, pushing forward a bipartisan bill that lays out clear policies on when and where students can access social media and their cell phones.

It will be adopted in all K through 12 schools.

But as senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan reports.

Despite widespread support for the effort, there's also pushback from those who don't want a one size fits all approach.

There is nothing, in my opinion, more dangerous right now than social media and the use of phones, especially during the school day.

Trenton lawmakers sounded the alarm over students glued to their cell phones in school, seemingly addicted to social media, where algorithms can divert their attention away from class and often redirect it to harmful actions like bullying.

One proposed solution a statewide policy that a direct district to limit cell phone use in school by students in grades K through 12.

Why are we sending people to school with phones and letting them have it on their desk all day and texting one another and bullying each other and posting the social media?

Senators noted new Jersey school test scores still haven't recovered to pre-pandemic levels and pointed at cell phones.

We always thought it was impacting their ability to focus, their ability to learn.

And now there's data to back it up.

There's studies that actually support it.

Republican Christian Corrado and Democrat Paul Moriarty co-sponsored Senate Bill 3695, which directs New Jersey's education commissioner, to develop an age appropriate policy to prohibit nonacademic use of cell phones or social media during classroom instruction.

List options for storage, including cell phone pockets and lockers, but also permit students to use cell phones during emergencies or with special medical exceptions.

It mandates districts adopt cell phone restrictions based on that state policy.

Many districts already have established cell phone policies and or are in the process of grappling with this.

Speakers before the Senate Education Committee urged flexibility because school parents opinions vary widely.

I have heard parents of pre-K students demand an all out ban on cell phones and smartwatches.

I've also heard middle school parents say that these devices help their students deal with anxiety.

So while we strongly support the goal of this legislation, we have offered some amendments to Senator Moriarity.

So we believe that there should not be two prescriptive or a one size fits all approach, and that it's necessary and appropriate for boards of education to have maximum flexibility in crafting their policies based on community preferences.

The teachers union welcomed the bill to counter apparent classroom surveillance by kids.

The constant videotaping that was going on, the pictures being taken, kept some people out of the classroom, prevented others from even wanting to take a job in a school system where they were going to constantly being recorded and used on social media and things like that.

So this this is a good step in that direction.

The committee hearing came just a day after the U.S. Department of Education issued its own playbook, noting within each state's guardrails, every elementary, middle, and high school should have a clear, consistent, and research informed policy to guide the use of cell phones in schools.

And that policy should reflect the insights and the engagement of educators, parents and students.

A Palmyra High School senior on Jersey State Board of Education reported earlier this month that a strict ban at her school is slowly winning support.

Some students have gone so far as to say their grades are better without the distraction of a cell phone.

They can pay better attention in class and therefore are more learning overall, less reliant on it outside of school?

And don't consider cell phones as necessary as they did before.

But she says the kids need a cell phone break during lunch, for example.

Other advocates asked senators to wait for more data before pushing this bill through the legislature.

What we've learned is there are very strong opinions on both sides of this, argument.

And, we would ask that on the social media end of this that you hold off, until the Commission on the Effects of Social Media on Adolescents has completed its work.

The committee voted unanimously to release the bill and sponsors and do want to fast track it.

They're hoping to get it passed, signed and in place by the beginning of the next school year.

In Trenton, I'm Brenda Flanagan, NJ Spotlight News.