Schools should just be allowed to have cell jammers.
Get approval to run your own short-range cell site that has a whitelist of IMEI (or IMSI, if that's not available) numbers, and blocks all non-emergency calls made by any phone that's not on the list.
Put the staff on the whitelist, and give parents the option to put their phones on the whitelist when they're visiting.
I get that teaching well is hard, but I cannot rid myself of the feeling that some teachers are leaning on the tech because actual teaching has gotten too hard. For one thing, it seems like they don’t have many options to deal with kids who prevent the others from learning.
It’s just sad all around. I’d put an end to smartphones if I could, and not just in schools.
I believe in what you're saying, to an extent, and even am grinding my schoolwork with a flip phone, but at this point I think the onus is on the parents to encourage productive habits and make the kid understand WHY the addictiveness is so implicit and dangerous.
if you don't have anything to replace the scrolling with, you will return to scrolling.
best of luck with the kids, imho meditation worked best for me kicking my phone addiction