Camella Price, a mother of two girls, is one of eight parents of New York City school children who consider wireless phones a lifeline to their youngsters—and they’re suing Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the chancellor of the city schools and the city department of education because the school district has begun stricter enforcement of a ban on communication devices, including wireless phones.
Price said in an affidavit that her daughters used their wireless phones to call each other and her for help one day when her youngest, age 12, was beaten up by other kids while walking home from school.
Another mother, Ellen Bilofsky, said that since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, she refuses to allow her son to ride the subway to school without his cell phone. She cited her family’s experience of being unable to reach their older daughter following the terrorist attacks after she was evacuated from Stuyvesant High School. Bilofsky said her daughter wandered the city for hours trying to get home with no way to contact her family.
Other parents cited the Columbine High School shootings as a good reason for students to be able to have cell phones in school and call for help if necessary.
“Without access to a cell phone, I have no way to reach my daughter during her commute or in the event of an emergency. If anyone tries to snatch or hurt my daughter, she has no way to contact me,” said plaintiff Isaac Carmignani.
Communications devices have been banned in New York City schools since 1998; however, only about 80 of the city’s more than 1,400 schools have metal detectors, which pick up weapons as well as cell phones. In April, the administration decided to expand the use of metal detectors due to concerns about weapons. That meant police officers would set up scanners at randomly selected schools—schools that had not been subject to rigorous searches before.
The scanning program netted 39 weapons, according to Department of Education spokesman Keith Kalb—and about 3,000 cell phones. And it prompted some angry parents to sue, protesting that the ban on cell phones interfered with their constitutional right to ensure their children’s safety.
“There is no constitutional right to disrupt a student’s education,” countered Kalb.
In court filings, the plaintiffs called the cell-phone ban overbroad, as well as “arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion and an unauthorized exercise of power, particularly in light of the existence of narrower alternatives that could readily achieve the stated purpose of the rules without interfering with students’ access to these vital communication tools and safety devices on their commutes to and from school and after-school activities.”
Norman Siegel, attorney for the parents and former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said that other options are available to the school system—for example, punishing students for using their cell phones rather than simply for possessing them at school.
He cited the example of how two different court systems handle lawyers’ cellular phones: one requires that cell phones be checked at the door, and lawyers can reclaim their phone with a receipt when they leave; another works on an honor system, and people are likely to face admonishment or be asked to leave the courtroom if their phones ring repeatedly.
“If you explain what the rules are and you apply them consistently and equally, students pick up the message,” Siegel said, who added he has taught a class at his former high school in Brooklyn.
Districts around the country have had to deal with students using cell phones during school. Among the common concerns are the use of phones and/or text messages for cheating; text messages used for bullying or to coordinate fights; and inappropriate use of camera phones, such as students photographing others in bathrooms or locker rooms and the pictures sometimes making their way to the Internet. In June, several students in Brooklyn were busted for using their wireless phones to cheat on their exams.
The issue also is international—last week, more than 20 students in Vietnam were accused of cheating on highly competitive college entrance exams using cell phones, ear phones and intricately wired shirts and wigs.
“We are sympathetic to the concerns of parents, but our experience is, if cell phones are allowed in school, they will be used and when they are—whether for talking or messaging or taking photographs—they inevitably disrupt the school learning environment,” Kalb said.
“I don’t want the educational process to be disrupted,” Siegel said. “On the other hand, it’s the year 2006. The technology is out there, and kids are like adults—they’ve got cell phones. So we need to kind of figure out how to deal with this, as opposed to this outright ban.”
Interestingly, all of the national carriers have recently renewed their efforts to appeal to families, usually by offering Global Positioning System tracking capabilities for a child’s handset or various ways to limit who can call their children and whom their kids can call. Mobile virtual network operator Disney Mobile also offers parents the ability to block the use of handsets during certain days and times (such as school hours), other than to call parents or 911.
Siegel said he put forward an open invitation to carriers such as Verizon Wireless, Cingular Wireless L.L.C. and T-Mobile USA Inc. to help solve the ruckus, which he noted might be a fruitful enterprise for gaining ground in the New York market. There are about 1.1 million children in the New York City school system.
“If the phone people could help reach a settlement here that everyone agrees with, that could be a model all over the country,” Siegel said. “I’m a little disappointed no one has called.”
