Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Year : 2, Issue: 29
Gothamist: New York’s school boards, superintendents and building administrators aren’t on board with Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to prohibit students from using their smartphones during the school day, arguing schools need more flexibility.
Hochul’s proposal aims to keep students off their phones from “bell to bell,” meaning all day, including in breaks between classes. But a coalition of school organizations is backing alternative legislation that would let individual districts decide whether to ban phones during non-instructional periods like lunch and homeroom, according to a joint memo issued to New York policymakers in recent days and obtained by Gothamist.
“Our groups … favor the approaches to school smartphone regulation proposed by the Senate and Assembly over that proposed in Governor Hochul’s Executive Budget,” according to the memo.
Among the groups that signed on to the memo are the Conference of Big 5 School Districts, which represents New York City and a handful of the state’s largest districts and the New York State School Boards Association, which represents boards across the state.
Also listed are the state Council of School Superintendents and the School Administrators Association of NYS.
Hochul first proposed bell-to-bell restrictions in January as part of her $252 billion state budget proposal, which also would make $13.5 million available to local school districts to purchase lockers, pouches or other equipment to lock phones away during the day. Like other parts of the budget, a version of the plan would have to be passed by the two houses of the state legislature, which put forth their own budget proposals last week.
