At a news conference last week, Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled plans to restrict the use of smartphones by students in public schools statewide. She would allocate $13.5 million of her $252 billion budget package for 2026 to help schools implement the initiative by the next school year.
If it is passed, any unsanctioned use of smartphones during the school day would be banned, and schools would be required to develop their own methods of storing, collecting and distributing students’ devices.
While Hochul said the plan is intended to create a distraction-free environment in classrooms and improve students’ mental health, some Elmont parents say they don’t believe a ban would help solve the larger problems in the state’s educational system. And despite the governor’s claim that a smartphone restriction would not pose a threat to student safety, parents say they are concerned about how a ban might impact their children’s ability to get help in an emergency.
Emmanuelle Jeanlouis, who has a child at Covert Avenue School and another at Sewanhaka High School, said that the proposed ban is an attempt to conceal the state’s inability to provide children with other important resources, such as test prep and updated teaching technology.
“They might cover it up and make it look shiny from a certain angle,” Jeanlouis said of the State Education Department. “But who’s going to hold them accountable for not being able to give the children resources?”
Jeanlouis, who was a paraprofessional, a teacher and a guidance counselor in the Education Department from 2010 to 2023, said she was also worried that schools would see the ban as an opportunity to withhold information from parents about bullying, fights, emergencies and safety concerns. That’s why, she said, knowing her children have the ability to advocate for themselves with their phones makes her feel safer.
And, she added, with all the recent reports of school shootings and gun violence, she wants to know that students in a school building can call 911 if the school fails to respond properly.
Regardless of emergency protocols and drills at schools, Jeanlouis asserted, leaving school personnel solely responsible for contacting emergency responders puts children at risk. “If one person is watching 20 kids, and that one person goes into fight-or-flight,” she said, “those 20 kids are going to die.”
The proposed restriction would also require schools to give parents a means of communicating with their children during the school day. But according to Nakitta Clark, who sends her 10-year-old daughter to Dutch Broadway School with a smartphone, the school has already failed to share information between her and her daughter in a timely manner.
Clark’s daughter once forgot her lunch at home, so she texted her mother, who brought her lunch to the school shortly afterward and left it with security personnel at the building’s entrance. But 40 minutes later, her daughter texted her again, asking why she hadn’t brought her lunch yet. Clark found out that it was still at the security desk, and she wouldn’t have known her daughter never received it had they not been able to communicate via smartphone.
Clark added that she needs to communicate with her daughter about who will pick her up from school each day, or to let her know if she needs to take a bus to another family member’s home when no one can do so. She said she was worried this would be an ongoing problem if the school did not communicate that information to her daughter early enough, or at all.
Shinelle Hewitt said that her 10-year old son goes to Gotham Avenue School with a smartphone so she can communicate with him in case of an emergency. “I feel more comfortable with my son having his cellphone in school,” she said. “Students need to have contact with their families.”
Hewitt agreed that students should not be allowed to use their devices in class, but added that she was worried about the possibility that school staff could confiscate the phones, or force students to lock them up.
And, she pointed out, the school does not always share important information, such as fire drills it is conducting or bullying that happens during the school day. “It could be the smallest thing,” Hewitt said. “But I want to know.”
Her son doesn’t use social media, she said, and taking his phone away would only impede her ability to contact him.
Other parents acknowledged that social media and phone use are an important issue in schools, and they can understand why Hochul wants to restrict them. But they believe that giving schools the ability to confiscate phones is not the right way to do so.
According to Jeanlouis, the best way to keep children off social media would be for Hochul to dedicate more state funds to improving after-school programs. When kids are encouraged to play with one other and socialize in person, she said, they stop looking to get those needs met online.
Clark agreed, saying that children tend to rely on social media for entertainment when they’re bored. More after-school programs that encourage socialization and teach life skills, she said, could also help working parents who can’t easily control their children’s social media use.
For now, these parents said, Hochul should rethink the proposed plan and use their feedback to create ways to improve education. As for children’s social media use, they urged their peers to use existing tools — like the Screen Time app, which can be managed remotely from a parent’s phone — to monitor and restrict their children’s time online.