NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams dialed back plans for a cell phone ban in New York City public schools, saying it may not happen this school year — just two months after the schools chancellor announced changes were imminent.

“There will be some action in the upcoming school year,” the mayor said at a Tuesday briefing at City Hall. “But the extent of a full ban, we’re not there yet.”

Holdups include getting parents on board and figuring out the finances of the program, Adams said, adding that he does not “want to go backward after we make the determination.”

“If you don’t do it right, you won’t get it right. And the previous administration attempted to do this, and they had to roll back, and the chancellor has been extremely thorough, hats off to him. Our desire is that we should not have any distractions in our schools,” Adams said, calling phones a “No. 1” distraction.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio lifted the policy in early 2015, as parental pressure mounted and the public schools struggled to implement it. Since then, a lack of a citywide plan has left it up to principals to design their own, and teachers to enforce it.

In June, Chancellor David Banks told reporters he was leaning toward banning the devices and expected to make an announcement within a couple of weeks. But the summer came and went, with no publicly shared plans.

“That’s the thing: It sounds easy, but it’s really really hard,” David Bloomfield, a professor of education law and policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, said of a systemwide ban.

“It appears that the chancellor’s initial statements were based more on political concerns than implementation issues. And those political considerations are real and substantive, having to do with student mental health as well as pressure from the press and the public to do something, and by other politicians,” he added. “But their tools are blunt instruments that don’t solve the problem.”

Education Department spokesmen declined to elaborate on what policy changes, short of a citywide phone ban, could be introduced — or whether there were more obstacles to implementation than the nation’s largest district expected.

Before a ban is finalized, Adams admitted logistical details still need to be settled, including who would handle the costs of the program, what to do with the phones during the school day and how to discipline schoolchildren who don’t cooperate.

“The overwhelming number of people would like to get the distractions out of the school,” Adams said on Tuesday. “How we do it is another question.”

Earlier this summer, the school board in Los Angeles — the nation’s second-largest school district — approved a cell phone ban. Gov. Kathy Hochul is also planning to introduce statewide restrictions in New York, which would join 12 states that have already passed laws, according to an Education Week analysis.

As of earlier this summer, internal department data showed 46% of the city’s 400 high schools already collect cell phones in some way.

_____

©2024 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.