California and South Carolina could become the next states to limit cellphone use in schools, with state officials taking up the issue Tuesday.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is sending letters to school districts, urging them to restrict students’ use of smartphones on campus. South Carolina’s State Board of Education took up guidelines to tell local districts to ban cellphone use during class time, but postponed a final vote until next month to take more time to craft the proposal.

The efforts mark a broader push by officials in Utah, Florida, Louisiana and elsewhere to try to limit cellphone use in schools in order to reduce distractions in the classroom — and address the impacts of social media on the mental health of children and teens.

But progress can be challenging. Cellphone bans are already in place at many schools. But they aren’t always enforced and students often find ways to bend the rules, like hiding phones on their laps. Some parents have expressed concerns that bans could cut them off from their kids if there is an emergency.

Newsom said earlier this summer that he was planning to address student smartphone use, and his letter says he is working on it with the state Legislature. Tuesday’s announcement is not a mandate, but nudges districts to act.

The debate over banning cellphones in schools to improve academic outcomes is not new. But officials often resort to bans as a solution rather than find ways to integrate digital devices as tools for learning, said Antero Garcia, a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education.

“What I’m struck by is society’s inability to kind of move forward and find other kinds of solutions other than perpetually going back to this ‘Should we ban devices?’ conversation as the primary solution to something that hasn’t worked,” Garcia said.

But some parents say banning cellphones would help their kids focus during class. Jessica French, a parent of a 16-year old and a 12-year-old living in the Northern California town of Palo Cedro, said her son has played games on a classmate’s phone while at school, further distracting him from learning. There should be a statewide ban on phones in class, she said.

Some schools and districts in California have already taken action. Los Angeles Unified, the second-largest school district in the nation with more than 500,000 students, passed a ban on student cellphone use in June.

Troy Flint, spokesperson for the California School Boards Association, says districts should be able to create their own rules on device access at school.

South Carolina lawmakers this summer passed a temporarily one-year rule in the state budget requiring schools to ban student cellphone use or lose state funding.

But state board Chairman David O’Shields said Tuesday there was no need to rush and give the districts “runny eggs” when a little more time could be spent working on the rules, getting more input from teachers, parents and administrators.

“Let’s get these eggs right. I want a good omelet,” O’Shields said.

O’Shields was especially convinced by Jennifer Rainville of the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center who pointed out more than 100,000 students were suspended in a recent school year and asked that the rules be specific as possible in pointing districts away from that as a punishment.

“The last thing we need is to come up with cellphone polices that are an easy way out for students that might take a suspended day when they need to be in the classroom,” O’Shields said.

“Let’s give back to kids a distraction-free childhood,” state Education Department Deputy Superintendent Matthew Ferguson said.

A brief survey of South Carolina teachers in May showed 92% supported limiting cellphone access in classrooms and 55% wanted a total ban. The survey from Education Superintendent Ellen Weaver also found 83% of teachers think cellphones are a daily distraction to learning, the Education Department wrote in a memo to the board.