(File Photo of Congressman Chris Deluzio)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Sewickley Borough, PA) Congressman Chris Deluzio was the moderator of a conversation with Pennsylvania State Senator Devlin Robinson, a parent, a student and educators in western Pennsylvania on Friday that was bipartisan to talk about the impact of smartphones in classrooms. Earlier in the summer of 2025, Deluzio sent letters to the 59 school districts in the 17th Congressional District to ask them if they will ban cellphones in the classroom this year and recently launched a survey that was public to ask Western Pennsylvanians if they think schools should ban smartphones in classrooms for grades K-12. This conversation was to collect information for Deluzio for his efforts to help ban cellphones from classrooms to stop the distraction and addictiveness that phones can cause in school. The office of Deluzio also plans to release a report including this information. According to a release from Deluzio’s office, other participants in the roundtable included: PA State Senator Devlin Robinson (SD-37), who recently proposed bipartisan legislation in Harrisburg to make every PA school phone-free all day; Melissa Costantino-Poruben, a PA State Education member who has taught math for 26 years at all levels in Avonworth School District and currently teaches 6th grade; Erin Ruggiero, also a PSEA member and Teacher at Moon Area School District; Kelly Marsh, PhD, the PA legislation lead for PA Unplugged and a local parent worried about how smartphones are hurting their kids; and Kim Francisco-Martinez, a senior at Duquesne University and 2022 High School graduate who grew up in the smartphone era.