New York Governor Kathy Hochul is expected to include funding for a cell-phone ban in schools as part of her budget announcement of this year’s budget. Blake Washington, the governor’s budget director, told the New York Post that the state would adopt a “bell-to-bell no-phone-use policy,” and that the state would put $13 million in funding towards the plan. Washington also explained that the state government intends to leave the details of implementing the ban up to individual schools; methods include storage cubbies in classrooms, pouches that remain in the students’ possession, and lockers.
Hochul has expressed her support for the ban in multiple forums recently. On January 13th, the governor released a statement signaling her intent to include the measure in the state budget, which will be announced later today. “A bell-to-bell ban, morning until the day is over, is not going to hurt your kids,” she said in an interview with CBS’ Marcia Kramer last Thursday. “It’s going to help them emerge with stronger mental health and resiliency.”
Officials from New York City, home to the nation’s largest school district, have already been considering the idea since at least last summer. Last June, then-chancellor of New York City schools David Banks called it a “major issue,” and that the biggest pushback he had received was regarding the ability of parents to stay in touch during an emergency, like a mass shooting. Speaking with Kramer, Hochul said her position was informed by discussion with law enforcement officers who told her that in such an event, students need to be “laser-focused on the adult in the room to lead them to safety,” instead of contacting their loved ones immediately or recording what’s happening around them. “If more parents heard that, they would understand.” The proposed phone ban announced last summer by Banks ended up dying on the vine, with Mayor Eric Adams stating less than two months later that the city was “not there yet” due to parents not being on board.
A ban had first been implemented under Mayor Michael Bloomberg nearly two decades ago, which was then overturned by Bill de Blasio in 2014. In a New York Post op-ed published last summer, Bloomberg reaffirmed his support for the measure, encouraging Adams to push through on it “despite the storm of protests it generates.” He also credited the ban he implemented with “transform[ing] the school system in ways that dramatically raised student-achievement levels.”
A widely-circulated Pew Research poll, which the governor cited in her statement last week, found that 72 percent of high school teachers described distraction due to cell phone use as a “major problem.” New York State’s teachers’ union, the UFT, supports the measure fully, only expressing concern with teachers being the first line of enforcement and potentially wasting time that should be spent teaching.
