LAS CRUCES, N.M. — This year, the Las Cruces Public School district has extended its cell phone policy to school buses, prohibiting cell phone use on buses unless there's an emergency.

The policy was implemented to prevent students from taking photos of each other on the bus, officials told the Las Cruces Sun-News. In addition, the phones were sometimes the cause of fights on the bus or they would get lost when students were passing phones around to look at photos.

Bus company Student Transportation Services of New Mexico provides school bus service for the district. If students use cell phones on buses, the drivers are to take them away and return them at the end of the ride or have parents pick the phones up at the bus company, the Sun-News reports. Students who continue to use their phones on the bus face bus suspension of up to eight days.

In May 2009, a school bus driver for the district took an hour-long detour from the normal route. Parents were alerted when some students began making phone calls from the bus. The district has since switched bus contractors.