Parents, Teachers Come Out Against Mayor's Crackdown on Cell Phones

As the Bloomberg administration cracks down on students carrying cell phones in public schools, the city's teachers and parents are lining up against the ban.

The United Federation of Teachers voted last night to oppose the policy.The union's executive board agreed that students should be allowed to carry phones to school for use outside of class.

"In lieu of banning the possession of cell phones outright, each school should develop and enforce a policy prohibiting cell phone use by students in the school building," the union's resolution read.It also called for increased penalties for students who use their phones at school.

Parents across the city are also stepping up their attack on the ban.Claiming that the policy infringes on parental rights and puts children at risk, a citywide coalition of parent groups is pushing the Department of Education to offer a moratorium on the confiscation of cell phones.

Yesterday, the Association of New York City Education Councils circulated a petition protesting the policy. Some parents are also planning a demonstration later this month on the steps of City Hall.

"I depend on the cell phone to coordinate the very existence of our lives," the president and founder of the group, Carmen Colon, said.

The association includes the heads of the parent groups that replaced the New York City school boards.

"We want to say to Chancellor Klein that you have to keep an open line to us and an open line from us to our kids," the council president for District 2, Rebecca Daniels, said. Parents opposing the ban said they understand the importance of barring the use of cell phones during the day, but that not allowing them into schools is going too far. They said the attacks of September 11, 2001, have made parents even more intent on wanting a direct line to their children.

The ban has been on the books since 1987, although it was originally aimed at beepers.

After years of running a "don't ask, don't tell" policy about phones, the police are cracking down as part of the new random metal detector initiative at public schools. Intended to take guns and knives out of classrooms, the initiative is mostly affecting students possessing cell phones.

Targeting what are considered the city's most dangerous schools, the police set up metal detectors yesterday at intermediate schools 232 and 303, which share a building in the Bronx. While the police did not find any weapons, they did confiscate 129 cell phones, 13 CD players, and five video game players.

The police found 232 cell phones over three days at the ACORN School for Social Justice in Brooklyn last week.

All items are given back at the end of the school day. Mayor Bloomberg firmly defended the policy during his weekly radio show on Friday, explaining that cell phones disturb classroom instruction because students are on their phones "text messaging or watching pornos."

School officials are also concerned about students using camera phones to take photos in locker rooms or to arrange fights after school.

"We're sympathetic to their concerns," a spokesman for the education department, David Cantor, said about parents. "But our experience is that if phones are allowed into schools, they will be used. And when they are, whether for talking or messaging or taking photos, they inevitably interrupt the school's learning environment."

The cell phone policy is listed in both the chancellor's regulations and the schools' disciplinary code. The parent petition says the ban violates a state law that requires a public hearing before such policies are put into place. Mr. Cantor said it does not violate the law because the city holds a public hearing every year on the disciplinary code.