Panic spreads… from the fingertips scouring your backpack for your Yondr pouch… to the legs slowly walking you to Townview’s entrance, where a teacher ready to send you to the gym entrance awaits you. Every morning, you rifle through your folders and binders for that green and grey pouch, knowing that if you don’t have it, your parents will be forced to drive the length to school to pick it up. You may even have to pay your school for them to return it to you, if it’s become a recurring event. It wasn’t this stressful last year; all you had to do was throw your phone in your backpack before it hit the bag check table. But to ring in the new school year, each Dallas Independent School District (DISD) secondary school student was given a bright green and dark gray pouch to store their phone inside of between 9:10 AM and 4:30 PM. The deployment of these pouches was due to House Bill 1481, passed on April 24th, 2025. The bill restricts the use of wireless communication devices during the school day and gives school districts the freedom to choose what methods they use to do so. Some districts keep the “phone off and in your backpack” policy they already had in place, while others adopt more secure methods. Hence, the Yondr pouch arrived at Townview. Now, it’s been a little over two months since their arrival, and that raises some questions. How have students and teachers dealt with them? What effects have they had on the school and its culture? And more importantly, do they even fulfill their purpose to improve student focus?
What the Students and Teachers Think
The reception of House Bill 1481 and DISD’s weapon of choice to enforce it has been mixed. While the majority of students dislike this new ritual, a few actually have seen benefits in the introduction of this policy. However, the majority of students are strongly against them. Within days of the bill’s passing, Townview students began to discuss their arguments against the new law, ways they would protest the use of the pouches, and even potential walkouts. Ideas were tossed into the air, posted on Instagram stories, and sent in group chats to defy the new bill when school started up. Despite the determination of many Law, TAG, Health, SEM, and ESSM students alike to find ways to voice their opinion about these small, synthetic rubber pouches, the anticipation died out quickly when school began to get serious again. Worksheets, study guides, and projects piled up and buried the aspirations of many to fight for their right to a phone in class. But that doesn’t mean that everyone suddenly began to like the pouches. Students stood by their opinion that the pouches had no benefit. A Law Magnet sophomore, Simone Detzel, gives the bill a thumbs down. “It teaches kids to be sneaky rather than preventing them from using phones during class.” In ways, the pouches do encourage students to be sneaky. It’s every week that a new method to unlock them makes its way through the hallways before a new one enters the rotation. When asked how many he knew, a Health senior replied “Oh yeah, a lot. You got the charger method, the eraser method, the pencil method, the locker method…” and went on. However, the main concern of Townview students is that in the case of a school shooting, they wouldn’t be able to contact their parents immediately. But in situations where a student can’t run down to the office to use that phone, they feel that they are left with nothing. With this in mind, most Townview students have taken an opposing stance to DISD’s chosen method to apply House Bill 1481.
On the other hand, several teachers like the addition of Yondr pouches to Townview.
“I like the pouches. Kids in school situations shouldn’t have phones.” – Luis Zambrano
They noted that they have improved students’ focus during class and encourage face-to-face learning. Although Townview is a school of disciplined and mostly focused students, even the most attentive students can be distracted by a phone. Some educators have even observed higher test scores, but others lower scores. This could be either the result of more engaged students or students without phones to cheat on their exams.
In previous years, a great deal of teachers utilized wall-mounted pockets for students to put their phone into at the start of class and retrieve on their way out. This prevented cheating and kept students focused. This wasn’t a widespread ban of phones, so no students felt the need to go out of their way to cheat this system for just one class. But now, teachers catch students with phones in class every day. They were fine without them for one or two periods, but all day for the whole school year has proven to be something many students will simply not deal with.
How the Yondr Pouches Shape Daily School Life
Every day students get more and more creative with the pouches. One moment they’re peacefully locking them at security, and the next they’re “slam it against a wall until it breaks.” Although there have been a great number of kids opening them, a larger number of students have decided to just deal with the phone ban and try to enjoy their school days without their devices.
“You can play hangman, bring physical games, draw, make origami, or even do class karaoke. There’s a lot you can do without a phone at school.” – Felix Aguilar
Free time during class has shifted from being an opportunity to scroll on TikTok to the perfect time to play Uno. Even during a blackout, students flocked into the schoolyard to enjoy fresh air with their friends for the morning before the dreaded voice of administrators ordered them back to class. On regular, well-lit school days, other students decided to add decorations to their pouches. Whether it be with paint, markers, or keychains, many Yondr pouches at Townview are no longer the default gray and green. Make sure to avoid metal keychains, they interfere with the locking and unlocking mechanism and could get you stuck at a magnet trying to unlock your pouch with angry peers behind you in line.
The pouches have also began to wedge a split between students and staff due to the enforcement of the new rules. Teachers see it as a way to restore academic focus and resolve issues that involve phones— cheating, cyberbullying, or distracted students. To them, it fixes a long-standing problem. But to students, it’s a punitive policy. They argue that it limits communication with family and ignores the fact that responsible use is possible. The physical locking of phones reinforces a sense of mistrust between students and teachers, creating a divide.
In Conclusion…
Overall, the pouches received mixed opinions upon their arrival. They’ve had positive and negative effects on Townview. Can they foster more face-to-face interactions? in school, helping screenagers all throughout the school. But they can also create a tense environment, one in which students feel the need to sneak around and rely on a far away office phone as the only way to communicate with their family during the school day. But at the end of the day (, really the beginning) your phone will unfortunately end up in a Yondr Pouch, and they are likely here to stay. All that we can do as students is find ways to prevent not having our phones ruin our school year.
