Parents Answer Cellphone Ban in N.Y. Schools
NEW YORK — With Liz Willen's eldest son about to finish elementary school and move on to middle school in the fall, she thought she knew the perfect graduation gift -- a cellphone.
It made sense with a home in Brooklyn, work on the Upper West Side and the children's school in Lower Manhattan. Already, keeping track of schedules, soccer practices, rock music lessons and other whereabouts was complex -- and due to get more complicated in September with the eldest off to a new school.
"The idea of not having a cellphone to contact him, or him not contact me, is insane," said Willen, who works at Columbia University.
And that puts her on the side of those balking at the crackdown on possession of cellphones by students in New York's public schools.
"Parents are livid," she said.
Although most school districts across the country ban the use of cellphones in the classroom, New York has for years been a notch stricter.
It mandates that students not even have cellphones -- or other electronic devices -- in their pockets or backpacks. The ban, adopted in 1988, has been routinely ignored as the cellphone has become ubiquitous.
That winking acceptance ended last month when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg endorsed bringing portable scanners randomly into city schools to find unauthorized objects.
After the scanners first were used April 26 at the ACORN High School for Social Justice in Brooklyn, district authorities reported that they had confiscated one box cutter, one knife "found in a trash can," 10 CD players, 13 other electronic devices and 129 cellphones.
Over the next two days, an additional 103 cellphones were confiscated at the school, which has about 700 students.
The scanners went next to intermediate schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn. Authorities said no weapons were found, but 153 cellphones and a scattering of CD players, iPods and GameBoys was seized.
The pattern has been the same, up through the sweep last week at a performing arts high school in Manhattan, where 180 cellphones were confiscated. Authorities also found one knife and 27 "other weapons" under a definition that included "metal hair picks, costume belts, chains [and] metal forks."
Weapons are not returned, but so far students have been able to reclaim their phones.
