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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. This is Supreme Court decision day, one of them. The second to last Thursday in June is a big one of those almost every year. As many of you know, they release their decisions, as if they were doing it for us, just after ten o'clock as our show begins. We are watching their feed to see if any of the big ones are about to come down. Presidential immunity from prosecution for Donald Trump. Can social media platforms remove content they deem to be false? You know Conservatives want the platforms not to have that editing.

Can states deny gun permits to people with domestic violence orders of protection against them? The gun rights side says the right to bear arms should apply even to people with orders of protection against them based on their risk of committing domestic violence. We're watching for those and a few others, and we'll tell you what we learn immediately when we learn it. That could be any second. We'll add a segment to the show to analyze any big decision that does get announced. Interesting that a couple of those Supreme Court cases pertain to social media because those platforms are in the news for two other reasons this week.

Did you hear that the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy had an op-ed in the New York Times proposing that social media sites carry warning labels like cigarettes and alcohol do because of how much social media use is contributing to a youth mental health crisis in this country? Why a warning label, Dr. Vivek Murthy?

Vivek Murthy: Now, a warning label would help parents to understand these risks. Many parents don't know that those risks exist. We have data from tobacco warning labels that, in fact, tells us that they can be helpful in changing awareness and changing behavior. Keep in mind, when Congress authorized these labels for tobacco more than half a century ago or nearly half a century ago, smoking rate in America was above 40%. Today, it's under 12%.

Brian Lehrer: Surgeon General Murthy on the Today show this week. We'll hear more from him later. Governor Hochul here in New York is now floating the idea of banning smartphones in public schools altogether. She'll have to wait for the next session of the state legislature next year to get that enacted, but she is starting the statewide conversation now.

Governor Hochul: Students should be number one, learning, but number two, socializing with other people in person.

Brian Lehrer: All this comes at a time when the education news site, Chalkbeat, has been chronicling how confusing the current phones in schools' policies can be for families and for teachers. Individual schools have different policies. Individual teachers have different policies. The Chalkbeat article looks specifically at New York City schools and reminds us that cell phones used to be banned in schools, but 10 years ago or so, Mayor Bill de Blasio lifted that ban, but things have changed a lot since then. Should it go back into effect? With us now, Amy Zimmer, the New York Bureau Chief for Chalkbeat. Amy, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Amy Zimmer: Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Your article begins at Forest Hills High School in Queens where you say, on its face, the cell phone policy there seems clear, but want to start with that example of what's clear on paper but not so much in practice?

Amy Zimmer: Sure. The school has a policy. It says phones can't be used in school. They have to be turned off during the day unless a teacher allows them as part of a lesson. Right, but that's not what happens. I talked to a student there, a senior, and he went through his entire schedule with me. It really ranges. He has one teacher who collects the phones at the beginning of class and puts them in cubbies. He has another teacher who, if she sees the phone, she'll confiscate it. If you go to the bathroom, you have to leave the phone with her.

Then he has other teachers who say, "We don't allow phones," but the phones come out, and they don't really do anything unless the class devolves into chaos. Too many people are on their phones. It's a real range. Basically, what the student said is there's no consistent enforcement. There's no really consistent policy and kids just test the boundaries and take out their phones. It's confusing to the kids, and it really puts the onus on the teachers to come up with their own plan when a school doesn't collect the phones.

Brian Lehrer: You told a really scary story in the article of one teacher who was trying to enforce a no-phone policy, at least for their class, and the student resisted and even threatened violence and the teacher just backed down.

Amy Zimmer: Yes. We did a survey. We asked our readers, "Tell us about what's working, what's not working in your schools." Parents, students, teachers reached out. Several teachers told us they were very afraid to confiscate phones because of that, because, like this speech therapist said, kids just spin out of control. It can get very intense. It wasn't worth it to her. She wasn't going to confiscate this phone and risk getting hurt, so she gave it back. That is a big part of the problem that teachers say is that even though if a school has a ban, in practice, it's not that simple because they don't feel empowered to confiscate phones.

Brian Lehrer: A really bad precedent to set for who's in charge in a school building, but then again, as that speech therapist said, you have to pick your battles.

Amy Zimmer: Right. Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Zooming out to a citywide view, you cite a patchwork of different policies at different schools. Full bans that include collecting phones at the door, policies that involve pouches, usually called Yondr pouches that are supposed to keep the phones from being used, but they stay with the kids and other things. Is it possible to give a brief citywide overview of what the main policies are?

Amy Zimmer: Sure. The policy is any principal can decide what to do with their school. Like you said, different schools do different things. I think it really is interesting because the Yondr pouches, that's this pouch that has a magnet that gets locked at the start of the day and then unlocked at the end of the day, like those tags on clothing that set up alarms. They told me, the company told me that this year, their sales in New York City High schools went up 100% and that they are in a third of New York City high schools. I think that what happened after the pandemic is that kids had their phones on them all the time and were so used to it that when they came back to school full-time, things were just a lot to handle for a lot of schools.

I think a lot of schools have turned to the pouches as a way to get a reprieve, but also, I think as a way to have just this consistent policy that phones are not allowed. We are locking them up in some way because, like I said, with the other policy, when it becomes the teacher has to enforce it, it I think becomes really difficult. Even with the Yondr though, I will say that kids spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out ways around it.

Brian Lehrer: It's not that hard to game a Yondr pouch, right?

Amy Zimmer: Right.

Brian Lehrer: If you just have a fake phone, a second phone, an old phone you don't use, whatever it is, and you put that in the pouch, the teacher or whoever it is who's monitoring it can see that you put a phone in a pouch, but you have your real phone on you.

Amy Zimmer: Right. Exactly. Yes, kids use fake phones, or sometimes they say they forgot their phone. Then later at lunchtime, their phones will come out. That happens also, some schools will collect phones at the start of the day. They'll have some kind of cubbie system or something. In New York City, you have really small schools, and you have really big schools. Forest Hills High School, for instance, has more than 3,500 kids. I think to collect phones at the start of the day there would be probably pretty logistically challenging. Whereas at a small school, that might work.

The issue with the collecting of the phones is, first of all, the time and the space. Some principals told me they're concerned about liability issues. I talked to an administrator who said that she had confiscated a phone but it went missing, and then she paid out of pocket to replace that phone.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, that's another downside.

Amy Zimmer: They have Yondr now, and she felt more comfortable with that. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: I can't even imagine for the big schools. You mentioned Forest Hills. The high school I went to in Queens had 5,000 students. Would they collect 5,000 phones at the door every morning and return 5,000 phones at three o'clock? Can you imagine?

Amy Zimmer: I can't imagine. Although I went to Forest Hills, and we were on split session.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, yes, we were at Bayside too. Still--

Amy Zimmer: Still, the reason they're on split session is to prevent the crowd of students. I can't imagine the logistics of that.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, split session. My favorite year of my whole teenage life was when I was a sophomore in high school, and I was on a school schedule that didn't have me going until 10:30. Love that.

Amy Zimmer: Same, but then senior year, I had to go in at 7:20.

Brian Lehrer: Me too. Listeners, we invite you in on this in a few ways. One, do you want a statewide ban on cell phones in schools or something short of that? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Parents, welcome. Students, welcome. Educators, welcome. Total cell phone ban in schools, yes or no? 212-433-9692. Call or text. Educators, for you in particular, what impact on your students do you see smartphone use in the school building as having? Does it impede your relationship building with your students, as one of the teachers in the article says?

Does it impede learning per se in your opinion, or maybe you think this whole issue is being overblown and we should be talking about the best methods for teaching math and language arts and science, rather than these non-curriculum social issues? You tell us. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Also, is your school's current policy confusing the premise of Amy Zimmer from Chalkbeat's article? How well is it working or not working? Do you like Yondr pouches? Also, I would love to hear anyone's reaction to the Surgeon General, Dr. Murthy's proposal for warning labels on social media sites.

Maybe if you like the idea, you can even propose some language. Maybe that's something we should do on the show. What should a social media warning label say? Maybe that'll be our newsletter question for next week or any of those things. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 for Amy Zimmer, New York Bureau Chief for the education news site Chalkbeat. Amy, are you surprised that all our lines are lit already?

Amy Zimmer: I am not surprised at all.

Brian Lehrer: Anna in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Anna. Anna, are you there?

Anna: Hi. Thanks so much.

Brian Lehrer: Hi.

Anna: Yes, I'm here. I just wanted to get off speaker. Hi.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks.

Anna: Yes, so I'm a middle school parent for three more days. Last school year, about halfway through the school year, our school instituted the Yondr pouches. My daughter is in a school that has both a middle school and a high school in it. Interestingly, when they were prepping people for it, not surprisingly, there was pushback from the kids, and they actually started a change.org petition,-

Brian Lehrer: Haha.

Anna: -talking about how they're being deprived of their rights. Also, some of the parents pushed back. They're like, "I need to get in touch with my child." They have what they call out lunch at school because they're in Manhattan, so they go to lunch in the neighborhood. I have to be able to contact my child at every moment of the day. Happily, from my perspective, the school held firm and said, "We're having not only a problem with the issue of distraction but an issue with bullying." When kids were out at lunch, they were taking pictures of each other, posting things.

The second half of the school day was full of kids being mad at each other and getting in fights about what people had done when they were out of the building. What they had heard from other schools that had used these pouches was that those kinds of incidents dropped to basically nothing, which I think was their experience as well. Another interesting thing they told us early on, they actually rolled it out in the middle school first, and then in the high school. In that in-between period, there actually was a fire drill. They said the middle schoolers got out of the school about twice as fast as the high schoolers because they were all sitting there texting and taking pictures and whatever.

Brian Lehrer: The high schoolers were. Yes.

Anna: The high schoolers, right, because they still had their phones. I think a concern that parents often raise is what if there's an emergency and obviously we hear these horrible incidents of school shootings where parents want to be able to reach their child. The flip side of that is if there's an emergency, the phones can get in the way. Obviously, there's a cost involved doing that citywide, but I would 100% advocate for it.

Brian Lehrer: You're for it, citywide ban. Keep it simple and cover everybody. Anna, thank you so much, and for the complexity of the story that you told. I was particularly interested, Amy, in the safety aspects of Anna's story like, bullying went down, and the kids who were in the fire drill, those who didn't have phones got out faster. Those are really interesting aspects.

Amy Zimmer: They're really interesting. We've also heard that kids use their phones to arrange for meetup spots for fights after school, things like that, or during school. Also we've heard that too, that kids will take pictures of other kids during lunchtime or whatever, and post them during the day. If all the kids have access, it can start these social issues during the school day that really bleeds out into the classroom and distracts kids. Also, she raised the point about the parents. We heard from a lot of teachers who said parents are actually the biggest offenders of calling kids or texting kids during the day.

That's really interesting because it feels like whatever policy is ultimately passed, and it does feel like things are moving in that direction statewide and maybe even citywide, there needs to be some education of parents too. It's odd to me, I didn't grow up with a cell phone. If there was an emergency, a parent would call the school, and the school would then contact the student. The student would go to the office or guidance counselor, whatever if there was an issue. I think there's a bigger issue that parents are worried about, unfortunately, in this day and age; school shootings and being able to contact their kids immediately. That's a real indictment on our society, I think.

Brian Lehrer: Absolutely. Yes, that was a surprise to me in your article. I guess it was a surprise to you as you were reporting it, that parents are among the main sources of calling or texting their kids during the school day. Is there a class issue here? I have to ask this because your article mentions kids, high school age mostly, who parents contact because they need the kids to pick up a sibling or they have part-time jobs after school, those kinds of things that might be more common among poor and working-class families that the families really need.

Amy Zimmer: Right. That's a really good question. I don't know the answer to that, but I think you're right. Yes, because some kids are on call for work or need to arrange their hours quickly, things like that. I would also say that some kids, we have a lot of newcomer immigrants who have language barriers, and they use their phones for translation, whether during class or elsewise. We've written about how, because there aren't enough English as second language teachers, there are teachers who, and kids, all day, they have their phones out because they are translating. That is something I think that schools are going to have to think about ways around if there's some kind of ban because that is also [unintelligible 00:17:58]

Brian Lehrer: We heard one parent who's all for a citywide ban. Here's another one, Lisa in Queens, who I think is not having this. Lisa, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Lisa: Hi, Brian. I don't know if I'm not having this, but I will say it's a little silly because I have three kids in two different high schools. Sometimes they put their phones in a pouch in the classroom, and sometimes teachers want them to use their phones for looking things up or participating in the class. Again, like what your other caller said, there are so many emergencies.

School shootings are real. When we had that air quality issue and my kids were like, "We have no masks in school, they won't let us leave." There are just things that happen that I do feel it is an issue. I don't think that teachers should get into power struggles with students. I think that's just one more thing that teachers have to manage. In this day and age, how do you not have two lines where a school has the teacher and administration access to the internet, and then kids don't? I work someplace where we have internet access for work purposes, but not personal internet access. I can't make phone calls or look at Google, or something like that. It seems like a simple solution to have two lines of internet use in a school instead of making it a power struggle.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa: I would like to also add, the onus is, oh, now they're in school, let's fight them about the phones. I think your guest also said no, it starts so much earlier. All of this stuff starts with us as parents, as adults. We're the ones that set the example. Does your kid have your phone at the table? Does the kid have the phone since they were two years old? Part of it has to come from society. We have to set it up for better success. Would not teach them all of these bad habits and then intervene so much later on.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have an opinion by any chance on the Surgeon General's suggestion for a warning label on social media sites? That's not the only thing he's suggesting, but did you hear that in the news this week?

Lisa: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: As the parent of three high schoolers, do you have an opinion?

Lisa: I did. It is always the fine line for me between censorship and what people have free access to. I'm sure you and I are probably the same age when we grew up with Tipper Gore and her censoring music. We listen to it anyway. You know what I mean?

Brian Lehrer: I do.

Lisa: It's, I'm still processing how I feel about that.

Brian Lehrer: Because that was warning labels. The younger people don't know about that. That was about warning labels when Gore was vice president.

Lisa: Yes, music with offensive language. I think kids have access to ridiculously insane information, and they're looking it on the school bus and very early on in life. I don't know what the answer is to that.

Brian Lehrer: Lisa, thank you. Thank you for your call. Amy, I want to follow up on one of the things Lisa brought up there, which is a tech fix to this, that maybe school buildings could have something that jams cell phone signals so they don't have to confiscate 5,000 phones at the beginning of the school day in a big high school, or give out 5,000 Yondr pouches, but they can use a jamming device. Then the kids can have all the phones they want, but they can't get on their social media sites.

Amy Zimmer: I don't know how easy that is, I will just say. I also will say that the Department of Education doesn't have a great track record with tech-related interventions just because it's a big system, and it's really hard. We see, like with remote learning, things fail, things fall apart all the time with tech-related stuff. I don't know how practical that is. It was interesting to hear that caller say some teachers use the phones during class, and I've heard that too. There are some school leaders who say we shouldn't ban phones because this is our society now and we should teach kids how to responsibly use phones.

That is an argument that some folks have made as well. However, I think some might push back and say kids' brains are developing in such a way that their impulse control is just not fully developed, and so more guardrails need to be put in place. Like that caller said, we're all addicted to our phones, I think, kids and adults, and I do think it's important to model good behavior, for the adults to model.

Brian Lehrer: In a minute, we'll take a break and come back and get more into the warning label idea from the Surgeon General, but let me make sure we get a teacher's voice in here first. Marshall in Westport, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in, Marshall.

Marshall: Thank you, Brian. I want to emphasize what the Surgeon General said about the social media guys are really good at what they're doing, and the fact you've got the best multimedia guys going after these teenager brains, I think that's a comment that really needs to be emphasized. I think anything that we can do, I agree with what the caller said that teachers don't want to be battling the students, but if it's a schoolwide rule, a statewide rule that's enforced, that's less on the teachers. It's more of just the law of the land, and that can be effective.

There are a lot of aspects to this, but I think the Surgeon General is pointing out our society is really under attack here, and we need to think about how to help our kids because I walk in a classroom, 26 kids are staring at their cell phone, they're not talking to each other. Having a good conversation, and just getting these kids off this addictive device, I think it's a very serious issue that that deserves at least this dialogue. I think high school is harder because these kids do have responsibilities, but getting the phone to them 10 minutes left on the school day so they could have communication, something could be done to meet those responsibilities but free them from that addiction during the school day. It's a real problem as an educator.

Brian Lehrer: I want to follow up on one thing you said, which was about students' relationships with each other. I wonder what you think about the phone's impact on your relationship with students. One of the teachers in the article was quoted saying explicitly that they get in the way of that teacher being able to build a relationship with his students. How about you?

Marshall: I wouldn't say that. I think once the school day gets going, once I'm teaching the class [inaudible 00:25:18] be there and working with me. I haven't had as close relationships in the most recent years, so perhaps there is some evidence there, but I think it's more with each other than it is with the teacher.

Brian Lehrer: Marshall, thank you for your call. Anything on that, Amy, briefly before we break and then continue with a little more specific discussion of the Vivek Murthy warning label proposal?

Amy Zimmer: Yes. I will just say that some of the teachers explained it for their relationship building because they're spending so much time fighting over this, like, "Where's your phone? Can I have it? I'm taking it," all of that, that they do feel that they're unable to start the class saying, "Hey, how are you? It's so good to see you." There's just this tension, but also the kids' kid-to-kid relationships, like that caller said, are really suffering. Lunchtime, cafeterias used to be these bustling places full of chatter. I've heard from teachers that cafeterias are just so much quieter now because kids are just on their phones. That's really sad to hear, I think.

Brian Lehrer: A little bit of pushback and text messages. A listener writes, "What happens in a school shooting where kids are calling 911? They won't be able to." Someone else writes, "Jamming is an FCC violation and a very big deal. You should know this." I don't know if that's a fact or not, that it's an FCC violation because we had another text message that was proposing the idea, but we're seeing that with this as with many things, this is not something on which everybody agrees, and there are many points of view. We're going to continue with Amy Zimmer, New York Bureau of Chief for Chalkbeat, and more of your calls and texts right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Amy Zimmer, New York Bureau Chief for the education news site, Chalkbeat. She's been writing about phones in schools and the debates over them, including Governor Hochul, this week, coming out with a proposal to just ban smartphones in school statewide. We're also talking about the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, proposal this week to include warning labels online on the social media sites. Before we go a little more into the Murthy proposal, Amy, just one more, I guess we could keep going on this because we're getting a number of responses to that little exchange we just had about jamming cell phones in schools.

A listener writes, "I'm a recent high school graduate, 2022, and I attended a school that used network blockers for social media networks to prevent students from using phones in schools. I, and many of my peers downloaded VPN services and were easily able to avoid the functionality of the network blockers and use social media freely." Again, nothing is simple, right?

Amy Zimmer: Exactly. Kids will always find ways to get around these things.

Brian Lehrer: All right. On the Surgeon General's recommendation for warning labels, one piece of pushback I've already heard from a public school parent I know is that the warning label method implies that he's blaming the parents rather than the social media companies, but here's another clip of Murthy on the Today show on NBC this week addressing the addiction by design, you might call it, that the platforms are fostering in the kids.

Vivek Murthy: Many of them say that they can't get off it because the platforms are often designed to maximize how much time our kids are spending on them, and despite the fact that many of them are experiencing harm. That has to change. It's why last year I called on Congress to put in place safety standards like we did for cars and other products to make social media safer. It is not okay for us to put the entire burden of managing this on parents.

Brian Lehrer: I know, Amy, this is not precisely on your beat of covering education, but do you have a basic understanding of what the Surgeon General is getting at and where it might fit into a larger scheme of regulating the hazards for kids of social media use?

Amy Zimmer: Yes, and just to take a step back, what's interesting is, in his op-ed, he started out saying we just have to act now. I bring that up only because the actual research is really inconclusive so far. It's, there's no definitive correlation. Some studies have found, yes, there's a problem, some studies have found the opposite. It's community building.

Brian Lehrer: You mean between social media use and depression, or social media use and suicide, or social media use and body image problems and eating disorders, none of that's been proven?

Amy Zimmer: That's the thing is that it's inconclusive because there are so many different ways that people define these mental health issues and social media use. I would just say the research isn't crystal clear, but I think his point is we can't wait and we just have to act now. Although he can't do this unilaterally, Congress has to agree.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, no, he acknowledges in the Times op-ed that he wrote about it, which is what first unveiled his proposal, that it would need legislation from Congress. It's different from cigarettes. There's no constructive use of tobacco products. We're actually going to do another segment on vaping later in the show, but we can probably say there's no constructive use of tobacco products. Social media does sometimes connect kids from marginalized communities to virtual communities that are lifelines.

Amy Zimmer: Yes, exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Or a connection during the pandemic lockdown, or I've known kids who were shy in person and began to break through to their peers on social media in a way that eased them more effectively into face-to-face interactions. Maybe that's a rare exception. I don't know, but I know somebody, and so maybe it's not as black and white as tobacco labels clearly.

Amy Zimmer: Right. There are kids who find their communities online and through social media, so that's part of it. There is no clear-cut answer here, but what the Surgeon General is saying is that overwhelmingly, there are issues, and so he feels that having this warning will help. Having the warning, it could help also open up more conversations between kids and parents. Another thing that he mentioned, just to bring it back to schools a little bit in the op-ed, was that schools have their part to play too in terms of making phone-free zones.

Just, that was something he mentioned. He also did talk about parents, and how parents should create phone-free times as well. Something that was interesting that he mentioned was that parents should work together and talk to other families and friends about rules around social media. There's this whole thing, waiting until eighth where parents have said to each other, "Hey, let's all have our kids wait until eighth grade before they get cell phones," or things like that. In some ways, it's helpful if all the parents are on board because, like one parent in the story said, she got her son a smartphone, now he's in sixth grade because he said, "I'm the only kid who doesn't have a phone." He felt excluded from the group chats from school. That social pressure and that social inclusion is a real thing and a lot of kids say that.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Even though there are recommendations now not to give your kids smartphones until they're 14. Even what you were just describing, networking among other parents puts the onus on the parents rather than a structural onus on the sites.

Amy Zimmer: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: I will give the Surgeon General credit where credit is due because he also writes in his Times op-ed that he also proposes that "Legislation from Congress should shield young people from online harassment, abuse, and exploitation, and from exposure to extreme violence and sexual content that too often appears in algorithm-driven feeds. The measures should prevent platforms from collecting sensitive data from children and should restrict the use of features like push notifications, autoplay, and infinite scroll, which prey on developing brains and contribute to excessive use."

Additionally, he writes, "Companies must be required to share all of their data on health effects with independent scientists and the public, currently, they do not and allow independent safety audits." He's got structural proposals as well, which would also require congressional action. Juanita in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello, Juanita.

Juanita: Yes, hi. Brian, I work at school-- Oh, we're talking still about cell phones?

Brian Lehrer: Sure, yes. We haven't gone on to Trump or anything yet.

Juanita: Okay. I work in schools predominantly Asian and Jewish. I think when you are working at schools where the community is very, very concerned, religiously concerned about the education of their children, cell phones don't even come up. It's never been discussed. The parents don't allow it. The kids do not bring cell phones to school. This is the elementary school. A few of them have cell phones at home, just a few, but it's not even a discussion. There's no cell phones, and no one is worried about a school shooting, although we know it could happen anywhere at any moment, but they don't because they see it as something that really, it would interfere with the education of the child. They're paying attention in class and the social connections that they need to form as young people.

Brian Lehrer: All right. I don't want to generalize two ethnic groups as a whole, Amy, but Juanita describes working in a particular community where the parents seem strict about this.

Amy Zimmer: Also she mentioned in elementary school, and I would say that-

Brian Lehrer: Oh, elementary school.

Amy Zimmer: -generally it's less of a problem in elementary schools.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, yes.

Amy Zimmer: This is the thing though. Kids are getting phones at younger and younger ages. Someone wrote to me the other day saying that she had heard of a kindergartner with a cell phone, which does feel rare, but kids now in elementary school are getting cell phones. I think the problem is much more acute in high schools and in middle schools.

Brian Lehrer: Right. In your article, there was a line about how the enforcement in the middle schools just goes down easier because kids at that age are still more responsive to authority than you go-

Amy Zimmer: I found that so interesting.

Brian Lehrer: -to the high schools, right?

Amy Zimmer: Yes. The middle school kids, this teacher said, still wanted to please the adults because she teaches middle and high school students, and the high school students just didn't care anymore. I think she was also saying that the high school teachers wanted to treat the high school students more like adults and give them more responsibility. There was that too, that kind of interplay where the middle school teachers maybe are a little bit more strict because they feel that the younger kids need that kind of structure. I thought that was really interesting.

Brian Lehrer: We got another text here, let's see if I can find it now. I can't actually find it now, but it was basically saying, "Treat the high school kids like adults, teach them about responsible use and social media literacy rather than going to the blunt instrument of a ban." That's an opinion too. One more call. Kim Marie, a teacher in the Bronx. You're on WNYC. Hello, Kim Marie.

Kim Marie: Hi, Brian. Happy to weigh in on this conversation. I teach in a high school in the Bronx. I've been here for three years. Every morning the kids file in, they have grade-coded envelopes. They put their phone in the envelopes. The operations teams collect all the phones. They have very specific bins. They don't see the phones until the very end of the day when the phones gets delivered back to them. I also have a kid, and this is a charter school I work in, I have a kid in a traditional public school in Midtown. She has her phone all day.

She's on her phone pretty much all day. I've had parent-teacher conferences where they talk about her being on the phone, and I'm like, "Okay, what are the rules around the phone?" They're like, "I can't take it from her." I'm like, "I don't want you to take it from her, but I want you to have some kind of structure where she's not allowed to be on it." They really do take a back seat in terms of that. They talk about DOA rules and things that I just don't understand. Also, just to speak to the caller talking about cultures, I'm in the South Bronx where there is a heavy African and West Indian culture here, which also is historically known as being very strict.

These are high school kids. They're coming with their phones, and their parents still have very specific demand on their school life, and they do quite well. I do see a big difference when the kids don't have their phones all day long and the intent that they put and the attention they put on their schoolwork, as opposed to what my kid is doing in Midtown.

Brian Lehrer: Kim Marie, thank you very much for that. Last question, do you know what a Yondr pouch costs by any chance, Amy?

Amy Zimmer: Oh, sure. Average is $25 to $30 per pouch.

Brian Lehrer: In schools where they're using them, who foots the bill? Is it the school? So much of the New York City public school population is relatively lower income. Is this up to the parents, or is this distributed by the school? If Governor Hochul is proposing something like this statewide, or I see from your article that Chancellor Banks is for something like this too, will the system distribute?

Amy Zimmer: That is such an excellent question. Right now, the schools are footing the bill, and so they have to devote some amount of money from their budgets to do this. I think that is going to be a key question. If there's a citywide or statewide policy, will there be funding to come along with it for Yondr pouches or whatever is decided? Interestingly, LA is the second-largest school district. They just passed a cell phone ban.

Brian Lehrer: Yesterday, right? Yes.

Amy Zimmer: They're figuring out now what to do in terms of pouches or storage. They have until January, so I think New York might be looking to LA to see what are they going to do here. The schools foot the bill. However, I heard from the parent from the school who said that her school wanted the PTA to pay for it, and it was $18,000. The PTA, after my story published, told me they pushed back, and the school is going to pay for it, not the PTA because what she said was if the PTA does pay for it, then it gives parents more leverage to say, "No, no, no, we don't want this policy," even though a lot of parents do want it.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Any time a PTA pays for something expensive, it also implies increasing disparity among families in the city even more than what already exists, right?

Amy Zimmer: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: So many schools fund extracurricular activities and things, through the PTA. As you know, some equity advocates proposed that that be banned, or that PTA dues from more well-off school populations be taxed, and that money distributed for equity to lower-income schools PTAs. What increases disparity? Yes, I guess when you talk about who pays for it, if it's the school that pays for it, that takes the onus off lower-income parents, but at the same time, that's $18,000 or whatever the figure is that the school can't use for something else, that would benefit the kids. That would be part of the debate in Albany, I guess. The money has got to come from somewhere.

Amy Zimmer: Right. Also, sorry, with the pouches-

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Amy Zimmer: -some schools, I think the company advises this to have kids be on the hook if they lose their pouch. One principal was saying that what she does is if they lose it, they'll collect the money but give it back at the end of the year.

Brian Lehrer: I think we all know teenagers who've lost their phones three or four times by the end of high school, so that could be a big bill with a lot of lost Yondr pouches. All right. Amy Zimmer is the New York Bureau Chief for the education news site, Chalkbeat. Thanks so much for coming on on this.

Amy Zimmer: Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Much more to come.

 

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