T was like the scene from the movie "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," only for a wireless generation.

Elena Brooks was incredulous when a pizza deliveryman arrived at Bethel High School one day last spring with an order for a student who was in class.

Finding the culprit was simple enough. "Go into the room, tell everyone to turn their cellphones on and find out which phone has the number stored for the pizza place," said Ms. Brooks, the principal of Bethel High, in Hampton, Va.

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When identified, the student said he had ordered the pizza because he had missed lunch. "He didn't see anything wrong with it at all, which was amazing," she said.

For Ms. Brooks and thousands of other teachers and school administrators across the country, the start of a new school year means more incidents like the pizza episode (which ended with its being confiscated). With cellphones and other electronic gadgets playing an increasing role in young people's lives, it is no surprise that they are an increasing presence in schools.

Among educators, it is mostly an unwanted presence. Cellphones go off in class, disrupting lessons. Students leave classrooms to make calls in the hallways. Others play video games or watch movies that they have downloaded onto their laptops. Some students even use hand-held organizers and cellphone messaging to exchange answers and cheat during tests. The problem is more common in the higher grades, although some devices, particularly hand-held ones like Game Boys, have trickled into elementary schools.

"There is a propensity for a lot of high-tech mischief if it's not controlled," Ms. Brooks said.

In response, many state governments, school boards and principals are struggling to draft policies that acknowledge the realities of a digital, wireless world yet minimize the potential for classroom disruption and cheating. Some schools prohibit all consumer electronic devices. Others ban devices inside the school but allow them on the grounds or after classes. Others allow them, but only if they are turned off or are out of sight. Policies on cellphones in particular have shifted in the past year, with some schools relaxing bans since Sept. 11.

"Every year we have a staff meeting about altering our policies — `What are we going to do this year in the face of new technology?' " said Dana Shelburne, the principal of La Jolla High School in San Diego. "We consider school a place where you come to do business. Anything that is appropriate to that business should come with you to school. Anything that has no connection should stay at home."

While electronic gadgets have been an occasional problem in schools for years — long before the digital age, for instance, boys were known to sneak transistor radios into school to catch what were then daytime World Series games — today the gadgets have proliferated and diversified. Cellphones, two-way pagers, Game Boys, hand-held organizers, MP3 players, digital cameras and even portable DVD players have made their way into schools.

Students are embracing gadgets with relish. At St. Petersburg High School in Florida, where a new policy allows cellphones, organizers and some other devices to be used only with permission, Mark Boyle, a 17-year-old senior, uses his phone as a daily planner, as a memo pad and, furtively, as a video game when he is bored in class. Even his locker combination is stored in his phone. "It's easier to get at than pulling out a notebook and paper," he said.

For many schools, the biggest issue is cellphones, which have proliferated because of low-cost calling plans and are now as much a part of many middle and high school students' gear as book bags. Some principals estimate that 30 to 70 percent of their students already own cellphones, with the highest percentages in suburban schools.

Over the last two decades, more than 20 states have banned cellphones in schools in under laws that limit the use of pagers and other electronic communication devices, generally as a way of thwarting student drug dealing, according to the Education Commission of the States.

But in recent years there has been pressure from parents to overturn such laws or local policies banning cellphones. With fewer families having a parent at home during the day, parents say their children need to carry phones so they can be reached at after-school jobs and activities.

The spate of school shootings in recent years and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have heightened parents' concerns about staying in touch with their children.

"If there was an earthquake, you wouldn't know where your child was and they wouldn't know where you were," said Susan Oliver, the incoming Parent-Teacher Association president at La Jolla High School. "These rules have to bend with the times."

As a result of such pressure, some state legislatures are repealing their bans on electronic communication devices, letting individual schools and districts set policies. Maryland, Arkansas and Virginia have already overturned their bans and other states, including California and Illinois, have taken steps toward doing so.

"It was never my intent to make criminals out of children," said Mary Flowers, a state representative in Illinois who proposed the state's ban on cellphones and pagers more than a decade ago and is now seeking its repeal.

Principals are sympathetic to parents but are obligated to follow state laws. "If we have a national emergency or an earthquake, they want to have access to the students," said Christine Clark, the principal at John H. Francis Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley, Calif. "I can't argue with that."

Indeed, although cellphones are officially banned in many suburban high schools in the New York area, on Sept. 11 they emerged in force. Carissa Kison, 17, who attends Passaic High School in New Jersey, slipped into the restroom to call her father, who works in the city, to make sure he was safe. "My parents say it's good to have a cellphone on you," Ms. Kison said.