School districts in New York are working to implement the state’s cellphone ban policy by August 1st.
School districts across the state have until August 1st to answer the call. That’s when they are required to adopt a local policy on how they plan to implement Governor Kathy Hochul’s new ban on cellphones and other internet-connected devices in schools.
Teachers and district leaders say the legislation, put into effect as part of the FY 2026 state budget, promises to be a game-changer in classrooms, where students have long been distracted by their devices.
But in the meantime, districts across New York are in varying states of progress as they work toward implementing the school-day ban.
Brian Fessler, chief advocacy officer for the New York State School Boards Association, says some districts are struggling to develop their plans on a short timeline.
“Until we had a state budget approved and signed into law, school districts were kind of waiting for the details of exactly what that new requirement and new policy would look like and what exactly they would need to do,” Fessler said.
The $254 billion state budget was more than a month late this year.
The result has led to a bit of a scattershot implementation, with some districts further ahead than others.
“We have a statewide top-down mandate prohibiting the use of these devices, in some cases, that means districts need to reverse the policies that they may have recently adopted,” he said.
For instance, Niskayuna Central School District Superintendent Carl Mummenthey says the Schenectady County school system currently has a policy that allows high schoolers to use their devices in between instructional time, such as during lunch, in the hallways between classes, and in study halls.
Now, to meet the state standard, Mummenthey says the school will update the policy so that the ban lasts all day – a change he thinks will help students engage more with each other and teachers. But the change may require the district utilize lockable pouches like Yondr bags, or some other kind of physical barrier at first.
“We think we are going to need some sort of intermediate step that helps children migrate from cellphone access to cellphone restriction in school,” he said.
Schalmont Superintendent Thomas Reardon said his district is taking a different approach.
“We’re not looking to go to the Yondr pouch route, we’re not looking to use a technology to thwart the use, we’re looking to go with a very simple system that we are using now and just amping up a little bit, meaning that phones are away, they’re in lockers, they’re out of sight,” he said.
He says the district, also in Schenectady County, already requires students to put their phones away during instructional time. But that policy will now expand to last all day.
“Right now, the only caveat would be that during free time, lunches, study hall, students can have them if that teacher or that group decides its ok, so this would be, I guess, the change; that theoretically by this policy they would be away or out of sight from the time of the start of school to the end of school including study halls and lunches, so that would be the biggest change,” he said.
Schoharie Central School District was one of the first in the state to adopt a bell-to-bell ban, adopting a policy shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Natalie McKay, a middle school English teacher, says students in the Mohawk Valley district were having difficulty engaging.
“They weren’t socially talking to one another; they were having difficulty in the classroom doing group work or partner work. They had been online for so long,” she said.
McKay, who is a member of NYSUT’s Board of Directors and is the president of the local teacher’s union, said she had to reteach social skills.
“Reteach ‘this is how you have a conversation, this is how you disagree with one another when you’re doing your work,’” she said.
But years after first implementing the full-day cellphone ban, McKay says the school environment throughout the district has totally transformed.
“You’ll walk through our cafeteria and you won’t see any students on cellphones. They’re talking to one another. They’re engaging with one another, we actually, I was walking through a couple months ago and students were playing cards. I mean it’s a completely different way of life, it goes back to when I started teaching in the early 2000s,” she said.
