NORMAL, Ill. (WMBD) — A McLean County school district has updated its phone policy to keep students engaged in the classroom.

While McLean County Unit School District 5’s current policy of allowing phone use within their buildings as long as it’s not used during class time is working, they wanted to find a way to accommodate all ages.

The district sent out a survey to more than 7,300 students, families and faculty gathering opinions on the phone policy the district had, which resulted in highly positive feedback.

“When you look at junior high and high school, there’s some differentiation in that maybe people felt like we needed to maybe do something slightly different,” said Superintendent Kristen Weikle.

Part of the changes include using Normal Community West High School to test out a pilot “zoning” method for phone enforcement.

Just like traffic lights, students have red, yellow and green zones for when they are able to use their phones: Red means no phones out, yellow means possible use for in-class activities or faculty discretion and green means phones can be used.

The school’s principal, Angie Codron, said the imposition of this method has been beneficial.

“Our cell phone referrals were in our top two or three offenses here at Normal West, right after tardies to class,” she said. “We’ve seen it move to about five or six after implementing the red, yellow and green zones.”

She said the decision to update the policy was a necessary move.

“I think we ended last school year at a point where we knew we couldn’t do nothing,” said Codron. “We knew we also, as adults in the building, needed to be on the same page to have similar expectations in what we could manage with 1,600 teenagers here.”

This comes after a bill backed by Gov. JB Pritzker that would ban cellphones in the classroom passed the Illinois Senate earlier this month.Bill to block cell phone usage in Illinois classrooms passes Senate

The overall message from the district in their phone policy enforcement is to be “clear and consistent.”

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