The BSD7 board met Monday, July 27. Two votes, two discussions. One of those discussions now has language attached to it that nobody outside the district had seen before.
A note on timing. This went up on August 13, from reporting done on July 29, two days after the meeting. The as-of dates below are deliberate: everything here was checked against the packet and the policy draft on that date, and I've marked plainly where the record was still missing. BSD7 doesn't publish minutes to a standing archive, so the district's board agendas page is where the official record of the votes will appear.
The phone policy draft is public now
In the preview I wrote that the packet didn't include the proposed new language, so nobody outside the district knew exactly what would change. That's no longer true. The agenda item links out to a working draft of Policy 3630, and the draft is readable.
Two things to hold onto before the details. This is a draft, and it is first reading only. District policy requires two readings, so no vote happened Monday and no vote could have. And the document is live and editable by the district; what's described here is its state as of Wednesday, July 29.
What it would require
At the high school level, the draft adopts what it calls "a phone-free policy during all instructional periods." Outside the classroom, device use would be "limited to academic, emergency, or medical use."
The mechanism is the part that hasn't been reported. The draft pairs the policy with what it describes as "a privacy-first geofencing mobile application installed on student devices" that limits access to distracting apps during school hours. And installing it would not be optional:
All high school students are to have the district-approved third-party app installed and functioning on their personal devices as a condition for bringing phones to campus. If the student does not download the app, they can opt to leave their phone at home or in the school office.
Tampering with the app, or trying to disable it, "will result in disciplinary action in accordance with the student code of conduct." The draft itself doesn't spell out consequences beyond that. It defers to the Student Handbook.
The draft also carries a privacy assurance: the app "does not provide the school with access to personal messages, location, photos, browsing activity, or other private content," and administrators see "only high-level indicators" about whether a device is operating within policy.
One wrinkle worth noticing if you read the full draft: the existing language permitting high schoolers to use phones before and after class in common areas is still in there, with the new phone-free structure layered on top of it. Whether that's intentional or an artifact of a document mid-revision is a fair question for a second reading.
How this compares to what was announced last fall
The direction isn't new. BSD7 said in November 2025 that its high schools would go phone-free starting fall 2026, with Superintendent Casey Bertram framing it as a well-being measure: "The real goal is to give students a break from the addictive nature of social media during school hours."
What's new in this draft is the enforcement mechanism. Going from "phones stay put during class" to "an app on your child's phone is the condition of bringing it" is a meaningful step, and it's the step families haven't had a chance to react to yet, because until late July the language wasn't public.
What nobody can tell you yet
I'd rather name the gaps than paper over them.
How the two votes went. The nonresident student agreement sat on the consent agenda and the MTSBA ballot was a standalone vote. Neither outcome is public. BSD7 doesn't publish minutes to a standing archive. Draft minutes get approved as a consent item at a later meeting and are linked from that meeting's packet. So Monday's minutes will most likely surface with the August 17 packet.
What the $16,000 covers. The packet listed a fiscal impact of $16,000 per year against the High School General Fund and did not itemize it. Reading the draft, an annual license for the third-party app is the obvious guess, but it is a guess, and I'm not going to print a guess as a fact. Worth asking: which vendor, what contract term, per-student or flat, and does it cover both high schools?
Which vendor, and what the privacy promise actually binds. The draft's assurance about messages, photos and location is the district's language describing a product it hasn't named publicly. The document that would actually bind a vendor is a data processing agreement, not a policy paragraph.
What happens to students who can't or won't install it. "Leave your phone at home or in the school office" is clean as a sentence and complicated in practice: students with IEP or 504 accommodations, kids running continuous glucose monitors or other medical apps on their phones, and families who decline on privacy grounds.
When the second reading is. The packet says the policy will return "as a singular action consent item on a future board agenda" without naming a date. The candidates are August 17 (regular) and August 24 (special).
Anything about the budget. The preliminary FY27 budget discussion was item 5.2, and as of July 29 the presentation link still resolved to a placeholder slide reading "Available Monday, July 27th," two days after the meeting. No figures, no enrollment assumptions, and no mill or valuation references were public from Monday. Final adoption is on the August 17 agenda, with a statutory deadline of August 25.
If you want a say
The two-reading rule is the whole reason this matters now rather than later. A policy gets discussed at one meeting and adopted at another, and the adoption usually rides the consent agenda: one vote, no separate debate. The window where public input changes anything is the gap between those two meetings, and that gap is open right now.
Trustees take written comment at trustees@bsd7.org. The next regular meeting is Monday, August 17, 5:45 PM at the Willson School board room (404 W Main St, room 217A), with a special meeting on Monday, August 24. School starts for grades 1-12 on August 31.
I'll update this post when the minutes or the video post. If you want that update to find you, the subscribe box is below.
Sources: the July 27 agenda packet, the draft of Policy 3630 linked from it, and the district's board meeting agendas page. Policy draft text verified July 29, 2026.
I'm a Bozeman parent writing independently, not affiliated with BSD7. If I've gotten something wrong, tell me and I'll fix it; corrections: patrick@patrickzimny.com.
