No School Cell Phone Ban in Near Future as Adams Takes Go Slow Approach

Mayor Eric Adams won’t be pushing to the city’s new education Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos to move quickly on any cell phone ban in public schools.

At one point, the ban looked all but inevitable until Adams hit the brakes only a few weeks before the start of the current school year. His then-school chancellor David Banks, was among many top aids caught in the wave of home raids and seizure of electronic devices of by federal agents in early September. Several weeks after the raid, David Banks said he was going to retire at year end.

Then Banks said he was pressured by Adams to step down on October 16 instead since DOE’s number two, Aviles-Ramos was already named to replace David Banks.

Adams was hit with a five count federal corruption indictment on September 26 and pleaded not guilty on September 27. His spent time before and after the indictment, finding replacements for key aids, including David Banks brother Phil Banks who resigned as deputy mayor, public safety and Sheena Wright, who was the first deputy mayor--and the newly married spouse of David Banks--when she also followed her new husband out the door and resigned. She and David Banks were sharing the Harlem townhouse that the feds raided on September 4.

With all that is going on, it should come as no surprise that a cell phone ban has receded as a hot button issue.

Adams moved the press briefing back into the Blue Room at City Hall, which can accommodate about 50 journalists but for the fourth week in a row, he stood alone at a podium as he had the previous three weeks when he held the conference in the City Hall rotunda. In the past, he’d be in blue room at a long dais with many of his deputy mayors seated at the table flanking him.

Adams in response to a question at the briefing acknowledged he’s still like to see the phone out of classrooms.

“Phones are disruptive to the education practice,” Adams said. “Not only does it encourage bullying, but it also distracts the children.”

But he acknowledged he has no timetable as to when, or if, a ban on phones in all public schools will take place.

One incident in an upper West Side high school on Sept. 12 may have hardened the resistance after a report of a person with gun sent the school into lockdown. There was no gun found inside Louis D. Brandeis High School campus on 84th St. between Columbus and Amsterdam Aves. But Parents and students were alarmed because they were unable to get in contact with each other because the school had its own cell phone ban in place. About half the schools in the NYC system have independent phone bans already in place, a survey from the United Federation of Teachers found.

The UFT president Michael Mulgrew has signaled some support for the concept of a ban, but the powerful teachers’ union doesn’t think teachers should be the party charged with enforcing a ban. That complicates the job for the new chancellor and Adams.

And in a tough primary coming up in June with many challengers already tossing their hats into the ring to oppose him, the last thing Adams would want is to rile up the UFT.

Adams did not mention the teacher’s union specifically, but did say he would need to talk to “stakeholders” including teachers and parents.

“We’re going to get it right,” he said. “We’re going to have stakeholders. We’re going to have children, educators, parents come up with the right way to do it.

“Just as I predicted, as soon as it was announced that we were even looking at it, you started to hear a host of people who were saying, you know, we don’t want it done,” said Adams.

“That is New York,” he shrugged.

He acknowledged he has broached the subject with the new chancellor, but it appears to be on the far back burner. Adams insisted he doesn’t want to have to reverse course if a ban is implemented, as happened during the administration of Bill DeBlasio.

“If you don’t get it right, you’re going to have to do like other administrations,” Adams said. “You’re going to have to remove it and then you’re going to have to implement it again. I want to get it right. And that was my conversation with the chancellor.”