From burner phones to decks of cards: NYC teens adjusting to the smartphone ban

At what point did school districts change?

When I was in high school, right about the time that cell phones were becoming common among adults but not yet among kids, our school had a blanket policy that all electronics other than calculators and simple watches were to remain in lockers or at home.

Having a CD player, pager, pda, cell phone, or pretty much anything else in class was forbidden. Teachers would take them away and you'd get it back from the principal's office at the end of the day.

I've seen a lot of talk about schools banning phones, but I don't understand why they were ever allowed in the first place.

generally speaking I don’t think they were ever really allowed, but if you tried to “take them away” the kids would just put it in their pocket and not give it up. and that was it.

the difference now is that we have things like the magnetic pouches so students physically can’t use them. the rule is the same, but now it’s actually enforceable.

When smartphones first started coming out a high school teacher took mine away - there was no blanket ban but I had undiagnosed ADHD and I wasn't paying attention during class. As she was taking it I told her if it got broken while it was out of my hands that was her responsibility, it cost a thousand dollars. I wasn't a rich kid and I got it on a contract with the phone company. I remember she got really stressed out and cried about it during class.

If you multiply that by 30 kids in a class, conservatively, a teacher could be stuck sitting on 30 confiscated iPhones. That's like half their annual salary in kids claiming they broke their phone. Not to mention any claims that a teacher used a kid's phone for some nefarious purpose.

Enforceable for kids that won’t buy a $10 magnet or open them with a couple of pencils and banging the pouch to dislodge the pin.

Educators in general seem especially scared of the liability fairy.

The correct thing to do here is your teachers position is to laugh at the idiot kid telling them about their legal liability.

The school may be taking some on, but if it’s a school policy short of actual gross negligence by the teacher she had none personally.

Even if the school had liability the correct response to such nonsense is to tell the parents to sue them. Most will not, and you defend to the death the few that do so others understand the cost of bringing frivolous lawsuits for silly reasons.

This whole nonsense of entire school systems grinding to a halt and lacking any implementation of common sense due to made up liability fantasies is ridiculous. Let those highly paid admins do their jobs and take on risk.

That 'fantasy' is not ridiculous. Teachers are quite often (nearly always) in a financially precarious situation with management that doesn't support them and parents that abdicate all responsibility. All it takes is one spoiled kid with rich parents to manufacture a complaint (teacher stole my phone and broke it). That complaint could seriously derail their life. My wife taught for years even though I made enough that she didn't need to because she loved helping kids learn. She left the profession entirely because the death by a thousand cuts that is the American education system was giving her actual medical issues from the anxiety, at great detriment to the kids she would have helped.

We treat teachers like second class citizens at our own peril.

> As she was taking it I told her if it got broken while it was out of my hands that was her responsibility, it cost a thousand dollars.

If that's the claim, I think an appropriate response would be to send the kid out of class (with their precious phone), or home. Can't have them not paying attention in class, and if they are literally a walking liability to discipline in any other way: fine, so be it.

It's exceedingly overblown. I agree administration (not teachers) are the issue here, they are the ones who are terrified of the liability fairy and refuse to actually support anyone who is actually attempting education. They don't want to have to take a single risk and maybe have to either do some work or lose their cushy job. Much easier to do nothing and pretend they are terrified of having to deal with manufactured complaints. These school districts are large - they could trivially come up with a in-house legal defense team and strategy for a rounding error on their budget and kill these stupid things as a chilling effect.

I've watched it happen in real time. Administration terrified of totally nonsense complaints and pretending that they just can't take on the "liability" - most of which would be laughed out of court. Bury these people in legal bills if they want to bring such crazy to court. But there is no risk ever taken unless an administrator's career is the one on the line.

Phone breaks in the custody of a teacher and there is not actual evidence of that happening? Too bad. Sue us. No one is suing over a $800 phone unless it turns into a crusade. If the latter happens, put up the strongest legal defense possible and make sure anyone watching understands they are not an easy target for such things. Don't want your phone to "break" while in custody of the school? Easy. Don't bring it to school and violate school policy.

If there were a competent administrator they'd be having parents sign release forms at the start of the school year for the topic. First offense confiscation for the day. Second you get it back on Friday. Third at the end of the school year.

I don't disagree that we treat teachers like shit. They are the equivalent of a retail employee being put in the front line and forced to deal with customer's vitriol due to horrible corporate policies set by do-nothing executives making 20x what they are. I put nearly all the blame on incompetent and downright corrupt administration enabled by equally deeply unserious politicians.

My mother is a teacher, and her school has gone through many different lawsuits from parents. In theory the staff are protected from liability, but if you think that going through a legal case is not stressful for the school from the principal to the teachers and counselors I don't know what to tell you. It only takes one parent out the hundreds to thousands of students at a school to make a mark. They can and often will go after the school for any little thing, from dress code to phones, to teachers being too easy to teachers being too hard. Anything that they perceive as giving a disadvantage to their children or that they don't like they will go after if they think they have a chance.