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SCMP Reporter

New York

Last year, New York City's education department decided to ban cellphones from public schools. With the full backing of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the department declared that phones were disruptive during school time - being used for everything from texting friends in class to arranging gang fights and cheating on tests.

At the time it was clear many parents were offended and intended to flout the rules, but only last week did it become clear that the city's own council members were among those who also rebelled.

'I have a confession to make,' New York City councillor Lewis Fidler  said at a briefing for the press. 'I send my kid to high school every day with his cellphone in his pocket. It's a safety issue.'

'My kids also go to school with cellphones,' councillor Peter Vallone Jnr  said. Mr Vallone said his decision was vindicated recently when his 10-year-old son missed the school bus and was left at the bus stop alone. 'It was a very dangerous situation. Thank God he had the cellphone,' he said.

Mr Fidler and Mr Vallone are among 46 of the 51 councillors  who voted  last week for legislation that  allows  children to carry cellphones  to school. What they do with the phones when they arrive - well, that seems to be  the key.

Youngsters'  safety has become a vital issue in a city that still remembers how important it was to  communicate quickly with family members on  September 11, 2001. However it happens, children have been getting phones into schools.  A  class-action lawsuit filed by parents is pending against the city, which accuses the authorities of violating the Constitution. (A court ruled in favour of the city in May, but that has been appealed.)

Even Tim Johnson, a parent adviser to the  education department, said:  'This is perhaps the only issue in recent memory in which parents' opinions are so unanimous.'  But the city has not budged.

The new bill marks the first time the council has tried to weigh in on the legislative front. The mayor immediately said he would veto it, but the council said it had enough votes to override the veto.

The bill is worded to stress that children must be allowed to bring phones 'to and from school'. But the department  said that right was not the issue. 'What the legislation says is unnecessary because it basically says children can carry cellphones to and from schools. Well, we never said they couldn't,' Dina Paul Parks,  a spokeswoman for the department, said. 'But you cannot carry it on to the school's property. And that policy hasn't changed.'

Norman Siegel,  a civil rights lawyer, countered: 'The legislation also says that no person shall interfere with this right. If the students cannot hold on to the cellphone, then [the department] is undermining this right. There could be a lawsuit based on the new law. A court should decide whose version is right.'

Meanwhile, parents will continue to do their own thing. 'Lawsuits can take a long time, but kids cannot wait,' said Carmen Colon, a mother of three teenage boys, and one of the plaintiffs in the class-action suit.

Ms Colon's second son, 14-year-old Andre Greene, still remembers two years ago, when he was walking to the train station after school and was cornered by a group of older teens who appeared to have evil intent. Andre pulled out his phone and called his mother, and Ms Colon called the closest police precinct, which sent out officers to rescue her son. 'I don't know what would happen to me if I didn't have the cellphone,' Andre said. 'Children sometimes cannot protect themselves.'



Schools' cellphone ban sends the wrong message, parents say