The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — the signature defense policy and spending bill — will ban cellphones for K-12 students attending schools on military bases. The bipartisan provision, focused on improving learning outcomes for children of U.S. servicemembers, was sponsored by freshman Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind.

The NDAA, a $900 billion must-pass defense bill, takes a major step towards reducing distractions for tens of thousands of students, according to the REFOCUS DoDEA Act. The provision is co-led by Banks and his Armed Services committee colleague Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich. Their committee has federal jurisdiction over the schools on military bases.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Banks said the key provision has national security, recruitment, and retention implications.

“We invest in them [our troops], we train them, we pay them, and if they serve in the military for ten or 12 years and decide to get out because their kids are going to a crappy school, that’s a national security issue,” Banks told ABC News.

“It’s a retention issue,” he said, adding, “We’ve got to do something to address it and improve it.”

There are over 65,000 students at 161 schools in U.S. military bases in 11 foreign countries, seven states, and two territories (Guam and Puerto Rico), according to Banks.

Banks, a U.S. Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan, told ABC News that military families are interested in improving schools on base and have been pushing for change.

“It’s frustrating for them,” Banks said, adding, “It’s the only option for them, so they want Congress to do more to focus on improving the DoDEA schools.”

Banks said he believes the U.S. is in a military recruitment crisis that the Trump administration has been addressing broadly at the Department of Defense, but cracks in the military base schools’ education systems have driven families away from serving.

“This is one small step that I think will have a big outcome, but hopefully we’ll draw more attention to how these schools are operated and what we can do to improve them,” Banks said.

The defense bill, titled the “Restoring Our Educational Focus on Children of U.S. Servicemembers at DoDEA,” passed 77-20 in the Senate on Wednesday, teeing it up for President Donald Trump’s desk later this month.

The Department of Defense will have a one-month window to address how it will implement the bans after the president signs the bill into law.

“Not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Director of the Department of Defense Education Activity, shall prescribe regulations prohibiting the use, during the school day, of smartphones by students in schools operated by the Activity,” according to the bill text.

After the vote, Slotkin contended Congressional leaders have a “responsibility” to work in a bipartisan fashion to help parents with the best cellphone ban guidance.

“It is better and healthier for kids not to be looking at their phones while they’re trying to learn,” Slotkin told ABC News. “It’s the first step in a bigger movement to banning cell phones in all K-12 schools across the country.”

Student smartphone usage continues to be one of the most contentious issues for school communities. While many states have at least partially banned cellphones in the classroom, some are still leaving those decisions to their local education agencies, according to a data analysis conducted by ABC News this fall.

Overall, Indiana and 19 other states (including D.C.’s public schools and the Virgin Islands) have completely banned wireless communication devices — including personal phones or tablets — for the entire instructional day.

There are, however, exceptions for students with disabilities who have individualized education programs. Banks and Slotkin’s proposal to ban smartphone use on federally run K-12 DOD campuses also includes medical exceptions.

Meanwhile, student disengagement remains one of the most pressing problems in education since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to some education experts.

At the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee’s State of K-12 Education hearing in September, Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor Martin West said that smartphones are a key driver of mental health challenges, a distraction from learning — both inside and outside of schools — and a deterrent to reading.

However, one of the top concerns for some parents and families is their ability to contact their children at school in case of an emergency, especially with the influence of recent school shootings. School leaders previously told ABC News that students should not be on their cellphones during a school emergency and Slotkin argued that there’s growing concern about children having 24/7 access to them.

“There’s a whole bunch of technology issues that parents are worried about,” she said. “Cellphone access is just one of them, but there’s a real passion behind figuring out the right way forward for our country.”

For Banks, the issue impacts his three daughters, who are in middle and high school back home in Indiana.

“They’re so much better off without cellphones in their classrooms,” Banks said. “Taking their cellphones out of the classroom and eliminating that as a distraction is good for them.”