NYC Schools Won’t See Full Cellphone Ban Yet, Mayor Eric Adams Says

New York City will not be imposing a no-cellphone-in-school policy anytime soon, Mayor Eric Adams said.
During an Aug. 27 press briefing, the mayor reaffirmed his support for keeping students off their devices at school but said that his administration would need more time to work on the details if it were to become an official policy for the nation’s largest school system.
“What we find is that the overwhelming number of people would like to get the distractions out of school,” he said. “How to do it is another question. Do you take the phones? Do you lock them up? Do you put them in pouches? What happens if a phone is missing? What happens if a child refuses to cooperate?”
For now, every school in the Big Apple sets its own cellphone policy that students are expected to follow. In preparation for the return to classrooms on Sept. 5, hundreds of schools have tightened their policies.
Many schools are using the services of Yondr, a company that produces magnetized cloth pouches to lock up students’ cellphones during the school day. Those pouches can cost $25 to $30 per student, and there remains the question whether the city will provide schools with extra funding to help them collect cellphones.
“Who pays for the pouches? What mechanisms are being used?” Adams said at the press briefing. “There will be some action in the upcoming school year. But the extent of a full ban, we’re not there yet.”
“The previous administration attempted to do this, and they had to roll back,” he added, referencing a citywide cellphone ban instituted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and abolished by his successor, Bill de Blasio. “I don’t want to go backwards after we make a determination.”
Under Bloomberg, New York City schools banned cellphones and other electronic devices, such as iPads, from school property. For many students, this meant paying $1 a day—or about $180 a year—to mobile storage trucks or local bodegas to keep their phones outside school grounds.
In 2015, de Blasio lifted the ban, which he said was “out of touch with modern parenting.”
“The ban was one of many policy changes that allowed us to transform the school system in ways that dramatically raised student achievement levels,” the media tycoon said. “Although it was undone by our successor, public support for mobile-phone bans has grown nationally—and across party lines.
“Of course, some kids and parents will complain and argue. My advice to elected officials and school boards is simple: Don’t buy it. There’s too much at stake.”