New York students and parents are waiting to learn if a citywide school cellphone ban will ever be implemented after the now-former schools chancellor postponed it indefinitely at the start of the month. The latest hold-up, a month after Mayor Eric Adams expressed trepidation about the ban he once championed, followed a school emergency in which a hoax report of a gunman sent Louis D. Brandeis High School into a 90-minute lockdown.
Critics say that if the ban were to take effect, it could leave students unable to contact the outside world in the event of an emergency. Brandeis parents heard from their children well before authorities, according to the New York Post.
Schools chancellor David Banks, who has since resigned amidst corruption probes into City Hall, told WNYC the day of the scare that parents’ fears about school violence were complicating the imposition of a citywide ban. Three weeks ago, he put it on hold indefinitely.
But nearly two-thirds of city teachers support a citywide ban, with 49% already enforcing a ban, according to a United Federation of Teachers survey released last month. The president of the 200,000-member union, Michael Mulgrew, said that “every day educators see the impact cellphones — and access to a 24/7 stream of social media — have on students’ mental health and classroom focus.”
The bans in place have taken different forms: cellphone pouches — criticized by teachers as being ineffective — cellphone lockers and collecting cellphones at the door.
“We’re trying to figure out what we can do to keep phones out of schools, where it’s not a distraction, and still allow our kids to be able to be in touch with their parents,” Banks said on a morning news program earlier this month.
A spokesperson for the Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment.
Garrett Ewald, whose eldest son, Eames, is a senior at Urban Assembly Gateway School for Technology, said there has been a “lingering anxiety” in his family over headlines regarding violence in schools, including a stabbing on the grounds of the son’s school last spring. When the school instituted a cellphone ban this fall, Ewald said his son was not a fan both because he’d lose an outlet for his boredom after completing exams and might need the phone “in case something went horribly wrong” at school.
“We pay all the damn money for the phone so in the event you’re lost in the city, we can find you,” said Ewald, who as a part-time professor at Long Island University often sees his students buried in their laptops. “I think that was where a lot of parents were coming from.”
Ewald said Urban Assembly Gateway School for Technology has an “aggressive” calling and texting system in place for emergency alerts that even notifies parents about fire drills. But not all schools do.
New York currently puts the onus on parents to get information about school emergencies, instructing them to call 311, “receive calls from the school’s automated phone system” or “read letters sent home with the students.” Parents can also select “School Notifications” when signing up for Notify NYC, which can, among other things, send text alerts during emergencies.
Mulgrew, the teachers’ union president, has emphasized that “emergency contact lines” would need to be set up in the event of a citywide cellphone ban, among other stipulations. Emergency texting programs were one solution put forward by the union.
“We can, however, figure this out — if we want to,” Mulgrew said.
Even if a citywide ban weren’t to take effect, Gov. Kathy Hochul is considering putting a statewide school cellphone ban in her next budget. At a press conference days after the Manhattan school shooter hoax, she said she understood parents’ safety concerns but continued to support a ban.
“I also listen to law enforcement a great deal in making our assessments on this and they would say that the last thing you want children to do when there really is a crisis on campus is to be pulling out phones, talking to their friends, recording the incident,” Hochul said. “They need to be laser-focused on the adult in the front of the classroom to lead them to safety.”
A school shooting last month in Winder, Georgia that left four dead and nine injured put a spotlight on school cellphone bans around the nation. Parents exchanged texts with students during the shooting, with students sending live updates about their safety.
Mulgrew said that while his union’s teachers have seen cellphones’ adverse impact on students, “we understand many parents’ concerns about being able to reach their children in an emergency.”
Current Department of Education protocol stipulates school administrators are responsible for calling 911 in the event of an emergency. The New York Police Department ran a “panic button app” pilot program last year with one school in each borough.
But the NYPD scrapped the $67,000 program, saying that it “did not meet our needs.” The app, Saferwatch, was swept up in the sprawling corruption investigations into City Hall after journalists reported the schools chancellor’s brother ran a consulting firm that lobbied the city to run the program.
NYPD officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Police have made 66 arrests for weapons possession on school grounds since 2006 in a city with 1.1 million students across 1,800 schools. In every year since 2015, weapons possession arrests have numbered one or less.
But over 10,000 911 calls were placed from schools for children in crisis between 2017 and 2022, according to THE CITY. High schools, where the bans would have the greatest impact, saw the bulk of 911 calls.
High schools in Midtown Manhattan, the South Bronx, and northern Brooklyn had particularly high concentrations of emergency calls for students in crisis, the publication found.