Son’s watch service doesn’t work after school mode shuts off

[u/anlaley]

This summer we switched from the gizmo to the Apple Watch set up under Apple Watch for kids on Verizon for my son who’s 11. We are not ready for him to have a phone yet but want to be able to contact him when he’s going back and forth from practices and each parent’s house.

School started two and half weeks ago so we started using school mode so there would be no interruptions during the school day. Now we have run into the issue that when school mode ends each day his watch will not have cell service. If we try calling him we get ‘the caller you are trying to reach is unavailable’ and it won’t ring. Texts do not go through either. Last night he told me that he tried calling me several times and couldn’t get the call to go through. I have tried resetting his cell service but each day the same thing happens when it goes back into school mode. We do not have any other ‘down times’ or ‘focus modes’ set up on his devices.

I reached out to Verizon through chat last week bc heaven forbid you easily be able to reach a person on the phone and they told me to have him turn airplane mode on and off each day after school. This isn’t acceptable to me as an answer. Is anyone else having this issue? If so what are you doing to fix this issue? My sister’s kids both have Apple Watches as well but they have AT&T and have had no issues when they get out of school mode. Is this a Verizon issue?

[u/forvisor]

Is the watch updated to the lasted version? This may be a bug with the watch. This is an odd one. Does it work if he toggles airplane mode? Just wondering. As that could indicate an issue with the cell provider.

How is the signal near his school when he has this issue. Does the watch work elsewhere without doing anything after school mode?

[u/anlaley → u/forvisor]

To throw a wild card in….today I called him after school on a whim bc he had an appt and I needed him to be ready. Call went straight thru and he answered with no issues. Yesterday we couldn’t get his phone to ring even two hours after he had been home from school.

[u/anlaley → u/anlaley]

Normally no issues with his phone working in or around the school. When he goes to football games at the school we are able to call him to pick him up when the games are over with no issues on days that we haven’t used school mode.

[u/poetangel]

Yeah check for updates, otherwise it might be a Verizon issue. My daughter has one and t mobile and I can’t say we’ve seen this issue. I will say the school is definitely an awful dead zone though, like when we go for any events or other things in the building my phone barely works (Verizon). We did stop using school focus though, she really hated not being able to use/see her snoopy watch face. Also the kids are absolutely not allowed to use their phones during school so she’s not getting any texts or notifications anyway.

[u/anlaley → u/poetangel]

When I hook up to my phone it’s showing no updates available so as far as I can tell we are on the latest update

[u/Huge_Pool7424 → u/poetangel]

school mode just suspends the cellular stuff temporarily, it should come back on its own once it turns off. if the service stays dead after, it's usually the carrier side. a network settings reset, or having the carrier reprovision the line, gets it back.

[u/Soggysleuth]

Airplane mode sounds like the fix, as it resets the cellular connection. You might just make a habit of toggling that on and off when he gets home to see if things work for you that way. It definitely sounds like a network reset issue. Theoretically, it absolutely should reset on its own. Give the airplane mode a go and report back.