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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. Thanks for sharing part of your day with us. We are grateful that you are here. On tomorrow's show, we have actor Fred Hechinger and director Bing Lu for their new film, Preparation for the Next Life. We'll also take a look at New York's many fabulous fountains, and we'll be celebrating Grandparents Day with your calls and stories. That's all in the future. Now let's talk about today and the first day of school. [music]

Alison Stewart: Today is the start of the 2025-2026 public school year in New York City. Independent and parochial schools are also back, too. This week, you might have had to get up a lot earlier, start a new routine, and/or embark on a new commute. You might have dropped off an anxious kid or maybe you, as a parent, felt the butterflies. I saw a lady wiping a tear away when I was walking to work this morning. Don't worry, lady. Little Kyle's going to be fine.

For many, it's a year of first, first year of middle school, high school, college, or maybe as is my family, senior year. This fall will be consumed with college applications, and this year marks the start of the statewide cell phone ban in schools, new federal guidance on vaccines for kids, and the threat of ICE raids for many immigrant families. To get us all up to speed about Back to School 2025, we've asked WNYC education reporter Jessica Gould to come on in today. Hi, Jessica.

Jessica Gould: Hi. Happy back to school.

Alison Stewart: Hey, listeners, what does this school year look like for you? Is it a big year? Do you have someone starting school? Someone about to graduate? Did you just drop your kid off at college? If so, tell us how you're feeling. Will you be filling out college applications or applying for middle school or high school this year? We want to hear all your back to school stories. Call or Text us at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can call or text both of those numbers. Okay. The big news is the citywide cell phone ban in schools. How did this come about?

Jessica Gould: Well, it feels like it's been going on and growing into this moment for a while now. I've certainly been covering it for a while. Over a year ago, there was this groundswell in the city with the former schools chancellor, David Banks, saying that he was interested in the phone ban. He had read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, which talks about how the rise of social media and smartphones has impacted students and teens in particular, mental health, and this epidemic of distraction. Governor Hochul also started taking a lead on this.

It took about a year plus to come together, but it was passed statewide as part of the budget last spring. While many schools here in New York were already doing some version of this, now it is the law, and it is bell to bell, arrival to dismissal. Theoretically, students should not have it at lunch or in the hallways, and they should have their phones stored away in some fashion.

Alison Stewart: Stored away, how? It depends on the teacher?

Jessica Gould: Well, no, it depends on the school, actually. Many schools are using these magnetic pouches. Yondr is one of the more popular brands, but there are others where you get your phone locked and unlocked. Locked at the beginning of the day, you carry it with you, and then unlocked at the end of the day. Some schools collect and put them in storage lockers that are maybe in the office, in the principal's office. Then there are some lower tech options that I've been hearing about. One of them is just keeping it in your locker, which does not sound foolproof to me. Then there's also Brooklyn Tech, which is the largest high school in the city, has a policy where you put it in a Velcro bag pouch. Even though it's not locked, it will be loud when you open the Velcro bag. I'm interested in the sound effects from that.

Alison Stewart: How does our state compare to other states?

Jessica Gould: I think about a third of states right now have a phone ban in place in some form. Well, a few big cities came before us in implementing this. LA was one of them. We've been a little bit behind the curve in that way, but not much. New York is one of the largest places to be doing this in the way that it is with a bell to bell ban, theoretically.

Alison Stewart: How are parents handling this?

Jessica Gould: Many parents I talk to are very happy that there will be restrictions on their kids, that they'll be more focused. I think we all have experienced how addictive cell phones are and distracting they are. Some parents have been really concerned about how to get in touch with their kids in emergencies. It's such a sign of our times that so many people bring up school shootings, and it was actually really heartbreaking. I was talking to a rising freshman, only 14, in the city and he was saying that if it came to it, he wanted to make sure that he could say his last words to his mom.

Alison Stewart: We had an intern say that in a Meeting.

Jessica Gould: It's a widespread fear. What they have done is they've required all schools to have a policy where parents can reach their kids. This, to me, seems very easy. Growing up in the '80s, '90s, as I did. You called the office--

Alison Stewart: Front office.

Jessica Gould: Yes. You never really wanted to be on the receiving end of that call, but nonetheless, it seems possible. There's actually research that even in emergencies, if people are checking their phones, they're not focused on the directions and instructions that they're being given to be safe. There should be a way for people to get in touch. Parents in general, I think, more often than not are in favor of this. I have to say, I was at a press event with the mayor's office. It was the mayor and the chancellor at a new school that just opened in Queens today. In that they had an announcement about the phone ban, and this was a very happy, celebratory student body. They were cheering for all sorts of things. But then when they said the phone ban, everybody booed.

Alison Stewart: Boo.

Jessica Gould: Yes. Kids have been largely panning this. I have heard from some kids, and I did a story about these teen Luddites who are evangelizing flip phones, and no social media, and the importance of focus and connecting. But many kids I talk to think it's ridiculous and unfair that adults get to have their phones, and we're just as addicted. Then there was this one boy I talked to who said that he was starting a new school. He was nervous because he was going to be in the lunchroom and he couldn't hide behind his phone.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that poor kid. Are there any exceptions for kids when they can actually have their phones?

Jessica Gould: There are. First of all, there are medical exceptions. If you need an insulin monitor or something related to health. Students with disabilites who need it for assistive technology, voice to text and text to voice kind of thing, can have it written into their plans to have. There are exceptions for caregivers. If you take care of a younger sibling, you, on a case by case basis, might be able to get permission to do that. Then teachers, if they want you to use your phone for some lesson, you can also use it then. Those are some of the exceptions that exist.

Alison Stewart: You're going to be reporting on this for the next few months, I'm sure, Jessica.

Jessica Gould: Yes, definitely.

Alison Stewart: We got a good call here, a good text here. It says, "I love walking my block on the first day of school and watching families smile, and ease nerves, and cry, and bring entire families for the first day. I have an eighth grader, so we're bracing for the crazy New York City high school applications. No phones in school? Great." If you want to weigh in on this first day of school, we would love to hear from you. What does the school year look like for you? Is it a big year? Do you have someone starting school? Someone about to graduate? Maybe you dropped off your kid at college? Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-443-WNYC. Will you be filling out college applications or applying for middle or high school? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. All right. Let's talk AI. This was the summer of AI. You reported earlier in July there was a deal made between Big Tech and the United Federation of Teachers UFT for some AI related training. What else can you tell me about that?

Jessica Gould: It was actually a deal between some of the biggest tech companies behind AI and the American Federation of Teachers, which is the umbrella that the UFT is part of. Though the city's teachers union has a unique place in this because they are giving some of the space in their building to become a training center where these companies will be training teachers on how to use AI, theoretically to help them with lesson planning and some of the back end stuff to save them time. The tech companies said this is so they can focus more on students and on differentiating lessons.AI can possibly help with that when you have a class of all kinds of different learners.

But it was controversial, as you can imagine, and some teachers were saying this is a fox in the hen house kind of situation where, not to mix metaphors, but the tech companies are getting a beachhead in the school system and to promote their their technology. A lot of people are very worried about what this is going to do to learning for students the more that AI encroaches, just like smartphones. But even to an even greater extent, will kids be able to make meaning out of text and language on their own when they can rely on these tools to do it for them.

Alison Stewart: Was there any discussion about how teachers or educators can identify AI in papers and on tests?

Jessica Gould: That's interesting. I know more about this actually from talking to teacher friends about it and that.

Alison Stewart: Oh, yes. Tell me more.

Jessica Gould: Well, one of them said that they spent much of last year instead of just grading papers, running them through plagiarism detection and AI detection, and that it really took away from the content that they were trying to teach through to spend all of their time on that. That teacher and others I've talked to are doing a lot or all of their assignments, their tests in school so that you don't have the opportunity to use AI to do your exam work for you. I'm hearing this taking on in many more places because of this, because it is so widespread.

Alison Stewart: We're talking with Jessica Gould, WNYC's education reporter, about the first day back at school. Let's talk about vaccines as well. For the last few years, there's been a push for kids to get flu and COVID vaccines, but there's been a change in approach to vaccines with the new administration. What vaccines do kids need to attend New York City schools and has anything changed?

Jessica Gould: I came with a list of what they need, but it's all the same as it's been before. The New York City DOE is not changing its requirements, but the challenge will be for things like COVID vaccines that are not required by the city's school system right now, we don't know yet exactly how access is going to be. I was talking to Caroline Lewis, who is our health reporter in the newsroom, to get the latest. She said the advice for something like the COVID vaccine is to call your doctor's office because they're still waiting for clarity from the federal government. There's an important meeting that's going to happen mid month that may clear the way for more pharmacies and doctor's offices to stock it and feel like they'll be reimbursed for it. But right now, she recommends calling your doctor's office to find out.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about literacy. Last month, Mayor Adams touted improved reading and math scores in the city schools. All right. Let's put that all in context. What is different from this curriculum that has been instituted from previous administrations that they are now touting?

Jessica Gould: We've been reporting on this for a few years now. The city, like many school districts around the country, has been rethinking how they teach reading. There had been a movement away from purely phonics-based instruction, a movement towards more independent reading for students even as young as kindergarten, which if you don't know how to read already, can be a strange assignment to have. There was a very popular curriculum that came out of Columbia's Teachers College that a lot of schools here in the city had adopted and ones like it, where in addition to this emphasis on independent reading and discovery, there were some directions to students to guess at words based on the first letter,

Alison Stewart: Context clues.

Jessica Gould: Right, or the picture, yes. That's all been pulled back, and the city required all schools to choose from one of several vetted curricula that has more of an emphasis on phonics and follows what's called the Science of Reading, which is a body of work that looks at what works best based on brain imaging, when kids are learning to decode words. It's been two years since the new curricula has been rolled out and three years since phonics was explicitly required in the way that it has been under the Adams administration, and scores did go up a little bit. They went up more for younger students who have been exposed to this in their earliest years of learning how to read.

It's promising. The scores did go down a little bit last year, so it's hard to draw too much of a conclusion from it. But the experts say that there's probably an adoption decline or dip where the scores go down a little bit as teachers are learning how to teach with this new material, and then they become proficient and the scores go up.

Alison Stewart: How much did the pandemic and the loss during the pandemic affect these numbers?

Jessica Gould: Well, all scores went down as a result of the pandemic, and it's hard to even compare the state test scores, which we're saying right now, went up with pre pandemic because the state tests changed. It's not an apples to apples comparison. I think it's also worth noting that it's still hovering around 50% literacy in the city. There's a long way to go, but it is ticking up, and a lot of people who are proponents of the science of reading method see this as evidence that it's moving in the right direction. In other states that have been using this for a longer time, that's been the case.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. This is Eileen calling from Connecticut on line two. Hey, Eileen, thank you so much for making the time to call All Of It today.

Eileen: Hello, Allison. Jessica and Allison, I just have a few comments regarding the phone ban. I'm just wondering, excuse me, if we had dedicated personnel in the office, and it doesn't necessarily have to be a fully tenured secretary because, believe me, they're busy enough as it is. I'm a retired principal. If we had dedicated personnel and a phone that would receive parent calls, I think that a lot of anxiety in this process would diminish. Parents need to know that they can contact the school readily, and students need to know that their parents can contact the schools readily.

It would allay a lot of anxiety, and the allocation for a dedicated paraprofessional or even dedicated volunteers, although that gets into some personal issues if a parent has to call for something, but consider it. I'm listening to the issues. Connecticut has been been quite successful in a number of its cities in decreasing now the use of phones in school, and I think that New York's job is bigger, but it is doable. But the issue of safety for both children mentally and parents would go a long way, and any limited allocation of monies to do this I think would be well worth it long term.

Alison Stewart: Eileen, thank you so much. There's another text that we got here about kids and their safety in school. This says, "I've been listening to your program and I heard Brian's program earlier during your discussions. How is it that no one has mentioned or expressed concern about the severe impact school shootings must have on our children returning to school? I grew up in New York. I'm now a psychiatrist. If I were a child today, I would be terrified to go to school."

Which leads me into our next topic, which are ICE raids because Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been more aggressive this year. We saw ICE patrols outside of schools in la. How have New York City schools historically responded to ice? What has changed? What hasn't changed?

Jessica Gould: The schools say that nothing has changed. The school system says that they are maintaining the same policies they've always had, which the policy is that no federal law enforcement can come into a school unless they have a judicial warrant. No one has tried so far to do that. No federal law enforcement. There have been multiple, four or five New York City public school students who have been detained, but they were picked up at court appearances. The city says that they really want all students, including newcomer students, undocumented students, to come to school. I was talking to somebody with the UFT, the teachers' union, and they made videos where they were looking directly into the camera and encouraging kids to come to school.

I think it'll be interesting to see what attendance is like this year and enrollment because for the past few years the enrollment has been either stable or gone up a little bit because of the arrival of Newcomer students. Some education officials have said that's been really good for the the city's public school system, which has been losing students in recent years. I don't know how it will show up in the numbers. I'm going to be talking to teachers about whether anyone on their rolls hasn't shown up because I would imagine that there are families who decided to leave over the summer or who are not feeling safe enough sending their kids.

In June of last year, I was doing this past June, I was doing some reporting on these unofficial ICE watch groups that some parents and educators had formed where they would alert each other if there was ICE, like a car that seemed like it might have ICE people or authorities, or if they saw somebody with the uniform on, they would alert each other over WhatsApp or text, whatever. It was a way to raise awareness and to make sure that kids were safe being picked up. But it also, I think, fanned some fear in the community, making it seem like this was more common or possible than it necessarily was at the time because none of those officials did actually come to the school doors. But we don't know how it will be starting this fall.

Alison Stewart: My guest has been WNYC education reporter, Jessica Gould. Jessica, thank you so much for joining us on this first day of school.

Jessica Gould: Thank you.