Now that school trustees have decided to allow cell phones in schools — as long as students don’t use them — the trick will be determining who enforces the rules.

Earlier this month, the school board took steps to ban cell phones from school campuses in response to what chairman Wanda All called “gross misuse” by students, including taking pictures of tests and sending them to other students; texting and ‘‘Facebooking’’ during class time; and helping spread rumors like the one that brought a large contingent of law enforcement personnel to the high school campus.

Under the proposed policy, students were not permitted to possess cell phones while on school property and during normal school hours. Students who violated the policy would have had their cell phones confiscated and would not get them back until the end of the school year.

Monday night, however, trustees voted unanimously to allow students to have cell phones on campus, provided they are not used duirng the school day. If they are caught doing so the phones will be confiscated until the end of the school year.

All said the board decided to retain the old policy while strengthening its administrative rules.

“This puts more teeth into the policy,” she said.

Trustee Jantzen Childers said he was concened about the students’ safety.

“In this day and time we know they’ve got cell phones and there will be times they need to use them,” he said. “They should not, however, be used in school during instructional time.”

Just because school district policy forbids the use of cell phones doesn’t necessarily mean students will obey it. Some of them can punch in a phone number or even send a text message to a friend from a cell phone that’s concealed in their pocket.

If they are caught using their cell phone, it will be confiscated until the end of fhe school year.

For teachers and administrators, that’s a mighty big “if.”