Title: Plans for NYC Schools Cellphone Ban

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer SHOW on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Last week, Mayor Adams announced that students attending New York City public schools will no longer be able to use their cell phones from the first to the final bell as of this fall. Now, this is in the context of a policy at the state level that the local school systems have to apply in one way or another.

Lawmakers have framed the ban as a way to ensure classrooms are free of distractions and have said it will help students learn and teachers teach. Joining to discuss the latest and to take your calls and texts is Jessica Gould, education reporter for WNYC and Gothamist. Listeners, if you are a teacher, if you are an administrator, if you are a parent, if you are a student, it's summer break. You educators, some of you are actually listening and can chime in on this. What's this going to mean? Do you like it or not like it? 212-433-WNYC. Help us report this story. 212-433-9692. Call or text. Hi, Jess. Always great to have you.

Jessica Gould: Hey, Brian, how's it going?

Brian Lehrer: Good. Does this story start with Mayor Adams, or does it start with Governor Hochul and the state legislature?

Jessica Gould: I think it's fair to say it starts with Governor Hochul and the state legislature. We've been talking about this for a while. The state officials and city officials have been talking about it for a while. There was an expectation from last summer that there might be a phone ban in city schools starting last September. You may remember that former Schools Chancellor David Banks seemed sort of hot to trot on that over the summer, and then they kind of pulled back.

The state passed the smartphone ban as part of its budget in April. Now the districts all over the state have to come up with their own regulations based on the state's, which, frankly, don't leave a whole lot of wiggle room. The City's regulations, passed last week, almost identically mirror the state ones.

Brian Lehrer: The new rule says that students cannot use "personal Internet-enabled electronic devices during the school day." Let's break that down. When it says personal Internet-enabled electronic devices, what does that cover, besides smartphones?

Jessica Gould: Tablets and also smartwatches, though if there are students and teachers listening who have other ideas of things that are snuck in somehow during the school day, I'd be curious to hear what they are, but that's what I know about: tablets and smartwatches. Students can still use laptops, when required by schools, on the school's Internet, but this is really about your personal smartphone, to prevent use during class, to cut down on social media use, and end this epidemic of distraction.

Brian Lehrer: Tablets like iPads, are they ever used anymore for instruction? Because sometimes they have been, and that would put them in a different category than your personal phone.

Jessica Gould: I think that they are. It's okay to use a tablet or a small laptop, or whatever the school is providing you for education-related purposes. That's one of the exceptions. There's a whole series of exceptions that are part of this legislation.

Brian Lehrer: As we continue to parse the wording, the words "during the school day," what does that mean? Is it a bell-to-bell ban? Is it something actually less than bell-to-bell ban or even more than bell-to-bell?

Jessica Gould: It's bell-to-bell, as you say. Students are welcome to use their smartphones as they go to and from school. That was a concern among many families, particularly given how far many students travel to commute to school in the City. Then they're supposed to be collected at the start of the school day in storage lockers or those pouches, the magnetic pouches that are distributed to students, often at the beginning of the day, and theoretically stay locked in those pouches all day. There's also an allowance for keeping your phone in your locker, but that seems a little dicier in terms of adherence to the policy.

Brian Lehrer: Right. You have to have a locker. Not everybody does, obviously. Certainly not at all grade levels, and even probably not in every high school.

Jessica Gould: Right.

Brian Lehrer: What about during lunch?

Jessica Gould: You're not supposed to use it during lunch.

Brian Lehrer: Who doesn't like this policy? There seems to be a growing consensus in the political world and in the educational world, I think. Who doesn't like this, if anyone?

Jessica Gould: From the parent perspective, I've heard some parents who are concerned about students with disabilities who use their smartphones for support, whether it's voice-to-text applications to help with reading and writing, or even some organizational apps if you have ADHD. Now there is a carve-out, one of these exceptions, for if you have it on your individual education plan, to have a smartphone or some sort of device to help you with these things.

On your IEP, or what's called a 504, you can get the accommodation that way. There's also been some concerns, especially in the last year to two, about translation and translation apps, since we have so many newcomer students or have had over the past two years, and translation was something that is now allowed that was part of the City regulations, too. Ideally, in both of those cases, the school system would provide something that "Does that work for you so you don't have to rely on your phone?"

If you do need your phone for that, you can get an accommodation. There have also been concerns about family caregivers, so students who take responsibility for a sibling or a parent, maybe they have medical issues, and there's an exception for that. Similarly, for medical reasons, the exception for glucose monitoring or something like that, but I've heard those were the things that I heard most about.

The exceptions do relate to a lot of that parental concern. Then I've just heard from students who think it's ridiculous that the parents and adults are cracking down on their smartphone use and treating them like they're irresponsible when the rest of us are just as addicted to our phones as they are. I've heard a lot of skepticism from students who have shared with me some of their workarounds and loopholes that they already use if their school has these bans to get around them. I think that's going to be a real concern.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Listener writes, "I'm a fifth-grade teacher. My K-8 school banned phones two years ago. Students have to put them in Yondr pouches." Yondr, for those who don't know, is a company that makes those pouches that you use at the beginning of the day. I told this story, by the way, Jess, after Halloween last year, somebody who I saw in costume out on Halloween went as a Yondr pouch.

Jessica Gould: Oh, wow.

Brian Lehrer: [laughs] They were containing themselves as if they were a cell phone in the Yondr pouch. It was labeled. I thought, "For some people, that's going to be the scariest Halloween costume they see." This listener also writes, "It's been amazing for staff, but also the students are grateful to not have the option to be glued to their phones all day. They are overall doing better academically."

That's a fifth-grade teacher. Another listener writes, "Applauding this policy. Teaching and learning can only be enhanced by it. Parents will hate it, but if there is an emergency, they can call the main office. That's how it was before cell phones. It can be that way again." This is a topic we haven't touched yet, I don't think, a concern that people have expressed. What happens in an emergency?

Jessica Gould: Right. Well, as the person who wrote in said, there has to be a way, and this is part of the law. There has to be a way for parents to reach their kids during the day, particularly in an emergency. The schools have to make it crystal clear to the parents what that is, whether it's calling the main office, which I assume will be the case, or some other method. I will say that the vast majority of parents, certainly of teachers and administrators, and frankly, many of the students I've talked to, are in support of this and want this distracting technology separated from them during the day.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a call from Jake, who's a Bronx middle school teacher. Jake, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Jake: Hi, thanks. I'm generally in support of this, but there's going to be a million little technicalities that come up. The teacher is, as we are now, always going to be the one that's going to have to police every minute of every day. When cell phones do appear, I think kids are going to have burner phones that they turn in, and they're going to have their real phone in their pocket.

With parents, especially in my school, parents are on the younger side, and they also feel very anxious. They want to know at all times if the kid is being bullied. They want to know every little thing. I think the City didn't roll this out right. This should have been spoken about in the last two months of last year. I think the teachers are going to be the one that are going to have, on Day 1, to explain all of this stuff and put out all the fires.

Brian Lehrer: How are you going to explain it?

Jake: Well, we're going to have to say this comes from the state and that every school is trying to enforce this. It's going to take time. I think it's going to be pretty messy and not just with students, but also parents and the hypocrisy of teachers because we're required to use our phones, right? We have to call parents. We have to do all. We have to communicate with staff. We have to call the office if there's a problem. The kids are going to be like, [unintelligible 00:11:03] "Well, why do you get your phone?" It's pretty basic.

Brian Lehrer: Are you for the policy? Do you think it's going to be a net plus?

Jake: Yes. The status quo is that teachers have to police this now. Last year, and it's very distracting, there was something called Cyber Mondays, where beefs would be settled in the cafeteria the first thing Monday morning before school even starts, and this has been going on for years. Every school was left on their own to figure it out. I remember I worked at a school, and they collected phones, and they lost a phone, and they had to pay like $600 or whatever it was.

It's going to be a full-time job for one school staffer to collect all these phones and give them back and oversee them, and when kids are leaving early, to check them out. What happens on field trips? There's just a million little questions that are going to come up.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you, based on something you said, one more question, and that's about the relationship between having smartphones in school and the relationship between the students themselves. I know one of the arguments in favor of the ban is that the phones create a toxic classroom for the students, but I think you told us that one of the reasons parents are going to want the kids to be reachable by phone is out of concerns of being bullied, that some kids are being bullied.

I'm just curious. I realize it's a complicated question, but how do you think these things fit together? Do you think having the phones has led to a toxic environment, including more bullying, and will this reduce that?

Jake: Yes, it speeds it up. You can bully somebody from a different classroom, but you could also enlist help from your friends, too. It's just a different way of communicating. Now, kids need that alternative, to be able to speak to an adult or speak to somebody if they're being bullied, whereas they might have texted their parent or a friend before. You need these outlets, and a lot of kids are scared to speak to an adult because now you're snitching, and it's very complicated.

You remember middle school; it was a disaster. Everybody goes through these rituals and growing pains, and there's nothing different now, except everything is so heated up nowadays. The adults are the worst example of it.

Brian Lehrer: Well, the world needs people like you, Jake. I have a young relative who just went into middle school teaching, and after one school year, he says he really likes it, and he really likes working with this age. You just said how it could be a disaster, the middle school years. Keep it up, people. [crosstalk] The world needs people like you who are engaging with middle schoolers.

Jake, thank you very much for your call. Interesting call, Jess, on the question of not just teaching and learning, and whether those are hurt by the presence of cell phones, but how they both contribute to and can be a way to diffuse bullying.

Jessica Gould: Right. One of the main reasons that I heard from administrators that that they supported this ban is because of the social media-fueled beefs, as he mentioned, spilling over into hallways or into recess. I don't know if having the phones away during the day prevents those things from erupting, before school and after school. I think a lot of the fights that happen are right before school and right after school, but certainly, I think the idea is that we're helping kids spend less time on social media, and that will lead to less of this toxicity.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Camille in Crown Heights. You're on WNYC. Hi, Camille.

Camille: Hi, Brian. I have a rising seventh grader. He's an only child, and I only got him a dumb phone, but he's begging for a smartphone because he wants to connect with his friends. We talk about a crisis of loneliness. My son's not interested so much in surfing the social media. He wants to be connected with his friends outside of school. Without a smartphone, it's sort of hard to do that.

That's one of the reasons he wants to take it to school, not to watch the Internet. He can watch the Internet and other stuff at home. The other thing I just want to mention is I think there's a specter of school shootings and also just over parents' nervousness about their children being away in this current violent environment, that they want to keep that digital leash to their kids. Those are my two thoughts.

Brian Lehrer: How old are your kids, and which position on that do you take?

Camille: My son's 12. Like I said, he only has a dumb phone, so I can reach him when he goes to soccer practice and stuff like that, but I want him to be connected to his friends. I know it's important. I'm a Gen-Xer, and my friends used to call me at my house on the house phone, but it's not a thing anymore.

Brian Lehrer: Camille, thank you. We appreciate it. The so-called dumb phones, we heard the one caller before, Jess, say kids will bring burner phones, meaning basically dummy phones, and they'll hand them over at the beginning of the school day, but keep their real phones in their pockets. That's an enforcement question, but what about legitimate "dumb phones," just to have a place to get a phone call from your parent or other caregiver or person if there's a reason to? Are they allowed?

Jessica Gould: My understanding from the state legislation is that dumb phones are allowed. I believe you can text on dumb phones. It's been a while since I've used one.

Brian Lehrer: Depends how dumb.

Jessica Gould: Yes. I suppose there's an issue, a potential issue there. I'll have to look a little bit more into the regulations as it relates to the so-called dumb phones, but I can say that, I have a lot of friends with rising middle-schoolers and how to let them be in touch with their friends and yet circumscribe their connections to social media and just how much time they spend on their phones, it's a real challenge that a lot of parents are navigating right now and not wanting to isolate your kid socially but also wanting to protect them from all of the dangers that can come from social media and from just screen addiction.

Brian Lehrer: We're getting a lot of support, I just want to acknowledge, for this policy on the phones and in text messages. One more text. "As a parent of middle-schoolers, I am so grateful for this support of the government to solve this problem," but one more question from a listener. Listener writes, "My child goes to a very large high school, and the principal has said that we will simply not comply." The question that they write is, "Is this mandatory? If so, what is the enforcement mechanism?" Enforcement by the state that the school comply?

Jessica Gould: Yes. Yikes on that. I would like that person to reach out to me because I have not heard of that yet. If it's in the City, I'd especially want to know about it. It's the law that schools have to comply. There are these exceptions, but they are supposed to be on a case-by-case basis. If a school just goes rogue, I hadn't heard of that, so I'll have to look into what they would do.

Brian Lehrer: WNYC education reporter, Jessica Gould, thanks for coming on. I know you'll be following this in September.

Jessica Gould: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Stay with us.

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