Mayor Adams still considering cellphone ban in schools citywide

Mayor Eric Adams Tuesday said he is still considering a ban on cellphones in schools, but has more details to work out.

“There will be some action in the upcoming school year, but the extent of a full ban, we’re not there yet,” Adams said at his weekly news conference.

Students are set to return to classrooms on Sept. 5.

There are many questions weighing on the mayor in crafting this no-cellphones-in-school policy for the biggest school district in the nation.

“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?’ All of this stuff, you have to really work it out. And we’re learning from those who are already doing it.”

Schools and districts around the country are instituting cellphone bans, to help students focus on learning and cut down on disruptions. Los Angeles’ school district voted for a ban recently.

New York City schools under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg banned them — former Mayor Bill de Blasio lifted the ban.

Bloomberg, in an opinion piece published on his namesake media company this summer, wrote that the city should bring it back, writing that, “The ban was one of many policy changes that allowed us to transform the school system in ways that dramatically raised student achievement levels. Although it was undone by our successor, public support for mobile-phone bans has grown nationally — and across party lines.”

New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks told NY1 in June he was planning to announce a cellphone ban within weeks — one that lets children carry phones with them to school.

But now weeks later, the mayor is saying that the policy is still being fine tuned.

“We’re learning from those who are doing it. We do have schools in the city that are doing it on their own. And so we want to make sure we get it right,” he said. “And so we’re going to review the policy. We want to get it right.”

Right now, students can bring cellphones to schools, and each school has its own policy on cellphones that students are supposed to follow.