UFT president supports Hochul’s smartphone ban in schools but wants districts to have a say, too

The head of the powerful United Federation of Teachers union supports Gov. Kathy Hochul’s push to ban smartphones in New York schools — but says individual districts should have the “flexibility” to implement it the way they want.

Asked whether he thought a statewide policy was necessary Wednesday, UFT President Michael Mulgrew said, “If the state says each district has to come up with a plan and submit it.”

But, he added, “So this way you give the school district the flexibility to do it the way they want to do it, let them engage with their parents because this is a real engagement process with parents. Why are we doing this? How are we doing this?”

Earlier this year, Hochul floated the idea of banning smartphones in schools and has since embarked on a series of listening sessions with parents, teachers, administrators and students around the state.

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The governor has called it the “ next frontier ” after passing a first-in-the-nation set of bills meant to give parents more control over their kids’ social media usage.

Mulgrew said he thinks teachers are supportive of schoolwide bans because it puts less of an onus on the teachers to enforce it.

“The amount of time for schools without the ban, the amount of time they take with just dealing with cell phone issues, it’s just cutting into instructional time and that’s a problem,” he said.

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While the governor has yet to roll out specifics of what a potential statewide ban would look like, she has previously cast doubt on a “district by district” approach.

“I want to know if there’s something I’m missing, but it seems to me that the district by district approach does not work,” Hochul told reporters after one of her roundtables on the topic last month.

“I don’t mind being the heavy, because we’re all fighting for our kids. So I don’t anticipate a piecemeal approach will be my approach,” she added.

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New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks suggested earlier this summer that he would implement a similar policy for all Big Apple schools, but he’s since been mum on whether a plan would move forward.

Mulgrew noted that hundreds of New York City schools have had bans on phone use for a long time, but he said those policies were driven by a disciplinary perspective and weren’t meant to deal with mental health and learning loss effects.

“We’ve had numerous bans in different places for years, but it was more about discipline, and it wasn’t about the effects that phones are having on students. So that’s where this thing has really started to shift,” Mulgrew said.

He said that his membership – nearly 200,000 public school educators in New York City – is largely made up of parents and one of their top concerns is about being reach their kids in an emergency. He said those concerns are justified, but schools with bans have implemented other ways for parents to get in touch with students, such as a regularly manned “hotline” set up by the school.

Still, he said policies should be nuanced such as allowing older students to be able to use their devices for classwork and ensuring that kids aren’t facing severe disciplinary measures like suspensions just for having their phone.

Any statewide action on phones in schools wouldn’t be taken ahead of this school year, Hochul has told reporters.

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