NYC NOW - Back to School in New York: Phone Ban, Bus Chaos, and Anxiety about ICE

Episode Date: September 13, 2025

A new statewide smartphone ban is changing classroom culture. School bus delays are proving far worse than official data show. And immigration enforcement is stirring fear among some families. WNYC’s Jessica Gould talks about how students, parents, and teachers are navigating the start of the school year in New York City.

Fall is in the air and that means it's back to school season. And if you're like me, your years of academic study are behind you. But maybe you felt the urge to buy some new notebooks or maybe a really fancy pen. You know that feeling that somehow manages to resurface every September no matter how old you are. You just can't shake it. This is NYC now from WNYC. I'm Jene Pierre. Happy Saturday.

So today we're talking all things back to school, from New York State's smartphone ban to increased immigration enforcement near schoolhouses. Joining me is WMYC reporter Jessica Gould. And before we jump in, Jessica, tell me what you love most about this time of year. Well, I have been calling it my Super Bowl. It's my busiest time of year. It's, you know, when I have to work the hardest to cover all the excitement and new policies around back to school. I'm also a born and bred school nerd. So I love school supplies.

I love the chill in the air and the excitement of going back to school. Though I know that it's a up and down time for many families. So I know you have a kid, but as an education reporter and a mother, this time of year has to be kind of difficult for you too, though, right? Well, it's a lot to juggle, wanting to get that first day of school picture and also try to be ready to be on air. but it's also a really exciting time. And for the first time, my daughter, who's in fourth grade, was really excited about this school year. So that's put a nice shine on everything. Is your daughter a fourth grader with a cell phone?

No, she does not have a cell phone. Okay. All right. Well, that's where we're going with this, Jessica, if you didn't figure it out. New York's statewide smartphone ban is, of course, now in effect. And it's not just phones. It's any personal internet-enabled device, like tablets, smartwatches. And this is from when kids get to school until they leave. Remind us how we got here, Jessica.

Sure. So Governor Kathy Hockel put the smartphone ban into her budget in the spring. And that became a statewide law that we now have to have a ban on phones from bell to bell, arrival to dismissal. But it's really the culmination of years of a groundswell for limiting access to social media for children, concern about the toxic effects of social media on kids' mental health, and also this epidemic of distraction in schools. Teachers talk about kids being on their phones all the time, having their earbuds in all the time. It's certainly not that every kid has had that, but it has been a real challenge, and it's made school very different from what it was like when we went to school. Yeah, you know, I know that you've been talking to students,

some teachers and principals. That's the big question that I have. How will you make this work? Yeah, I think schools are still figuring it out, but they've rolled out a bunch of different strategies. So what it looks like really varies depending on the school that you go to. Some schools have storage lockers where people collect the phones at the beginning of the day. Some schools have even hired new personnel to do this job to collect the phones and then redistribute them at the end of the day. Some give out the magnetic pouches that you and I might know from going to music concerts or shows, and the kids are supposed to keep that with them all day and not open them. And then there are some low-tech options. There are Velcro pouches that some schools are

using or bubble wrap or kids just have to keep them in their lockers. So it's really a wide range. But what I will say is that I've heard from some teachers and some principals that, yes, there have been snags. Yes, they have found some burner phones. Yes, the lines to get in have been long and that's a little challenging. But when the kids, are in school. They are paying more attention. And the most distinct change that one principal said, she noticed, was that the cafeteria is louder in a good way. Wow. Kids are talking to each other instead of being buried in their phones. And there's an excitement and she said a joy. So, you know, cautious optimism, but we'll be following how this

rollout goes. Yeah, yeah. It's only been one week. But I'm wondering, what does a successful phone ban look like? And how do we measure that? Yeah, I think that one concern is how much discipline and consequence has to come from noncompliance. And the New York Civil Liberties Union, for example, opposed the ban because they were concerned about over-policing of students. But I think what a good phone ban or a successful phone ban looks like, it looks like kids paying attention in school. Maybe they aren't, you know, paying attention all the time. I've heard of some teachers sort of noticing, even with a little glee, that kids pass notes, you know, written notes instead of texting each other. I remember that.

But more focus and more of that engagement with their lessons and also with each other. Stick around. There's more to come. So Jessica, another big back-to-school story. And, you know, it seems to always be. a thing that comes up. School bus service. You and our colleague data reporter Joe Hong, you all published an investigation this week showing that school bus delays are far worse than the city data actually shows us. Why is that? Yeah, as education reporter, I cover this phenomenon each year that there's just chaos in school busing at the beginning of the year.

And some of that chaos continues throughout the year. Buses are late picking up kids. They're late getting them to school. They're late getting them home. Kids are spending hours as many as three hours on the bus. This is particularly difficult for students with disabilities who disproportionately rely on the school buses to get to school, to get to specialized programs throughout the city and even into the suburbs. So it's a real challenge. And we looked at the extent to which the delays are reflected in the city's official data. And we kind of fact-checked it by talking to to parents and looking at their personal logs of how many times the bus was late to pick their kid up and get them to school. And we found that there were so many more delays that parents

and their kids experienced than were captured in the data. And what we learned is that the city relies on school bus companies to self-report the delay data. And this is for a complicated reason that probably has to do with challenges the city has had getting functional GPS onto buses, despite millions of dollars in investment to try to make that happen. And what we learned is that the city finds bus companies for delays, but it also relies on those same companies to self-report the delays. So when we interviewed parents, we found that less than a quarter of the delays that they experienced and submitted complaints about were actually reflected in the official data. In your reporting, you mentioned a woman by the name of Heidi Norton.

Yeah, so Heidi's son is a fourth grader at a specialized school for dyslexia, which is only a few miles from where she lives. But the bus is often really late, picking her kid up for school and getting her kid to school. This has a real impact on their family in terms of everyone being able to get to work on time, but also on her son who's going to this school for literacy support. His very first session right after the bell rings is one-on-one reading support. So his first period, if he's late for school, then he misses that completely. And that's the case for many of the kids. She submitted 23 complaints to the Education Department, but the city's public data showed zero delays on her route.

You trust this child to get there safely, and you're putting on. all of your trust in the system and it keeps failing. What have city lawmakers had to say about your findings? First of all, I talked to a former city council member who helped write a bill that called for reporting on school bus service, including delays. And he said it was never the intention of the law, that it be reliant upon the school bus companies themselves, self-reporting this data. And then I also talk to Rita Joseph, the council member who chairs the education committee for the city.

And she said she's going to look into tightening that reporting law. And she also wants to see new contracts with the bus companies that require more transparency, better data reporting, and better service. The reporting bill has to be better. Maybe I need to go back and amend that and tweak it. So I'm getting better response because that data is going to drive my policy. I tell them that. It's going to drive the work that I do as the chair.

on behalf of New York City kids. I should say that the city bus companies and bus drivers union all say that they do their best to record delays accurately and report them and that these delays only make up a tiny fraction of the millions of trips each way that kids are taking all across the city every day. Now, Jessica, classes are reopening this year against the backdrop of increased immigration enforcement and ice rates all over our nation. The city's public schools saw about 40,000 new immigrant students enter schools over the past three years. Briefly take me back to this past school year because there were a few New York City public school students who were detained at courthouse appearances, right?

Right. So school officials are telling parents that they really want them to send their kids to school and that they will be safe at school. and they have reminded all of us that federal law enforcement needs a judicial warrant in order to enter a school, and that so far ICE agents have not approached schools themselves. As you said, they have picked up some students from court hearings. And May and June of last spring, as these enforcement efforts were picking up speed, there were informal groups of parents and teachers who've made these Ice Watch groups that emerged on WhatsApp and other messaging platforms to alert each other when they thought they saw ICE agents near a school. And some of those were false alarms. It was hard to really tell in what cases there might have actually been a real sighting or a real possibility of an ICE agent coming to a school.

But some schools did change their plans a little bit, like having dismissal, inside instead of having dismissal, you know, right outside of the school. But there's a lot of fear. Yeah. And just to be clear, Jessica, ICE agents cannot enter schools, right? That's right, unless they have a federal judicial warrant. And principals and teachers and even security agents have been advised to call the legal department, to call lawyers that work for the school system. if a C.Gen even tries to enter a school. So far, that has not been the case. Jessica, before we get you out of here,

big mayoral election coming up in a couple months, when it comes to education and issues surrounding education, where does that fall on the campaign trail? It has not been a central conversation in the mayor's race, and it's a concern, actually. A lot of education advocates and, political analysts have said that education has not been as central an issue in the mayor's race as it should be because it is such a crucial responsibility of the mayor. We have mayoral

control. Zoran Mamdani has said that he might change the way mayoral control works in the city. That would be a big change for the city. Mayoral control of the city's public schools appointing the chancellor setting policy. There's a emerging discussion over the role that charter schools should play, which has been a backburner issue under the last administration. So it's heating up a little bit. But overall, education is such a huge part of the city's budget and of the everyday life of so many New Yorkers. And I'm hoping to see it become more forefront in the weeks to come. That's WMYC's Jessica Gould. Thanks a lot, Jessica. Thanks. And thank you for listening to NYC Now from WNMWN.

YC. I'm Jenae Pierre. Have a lovely weekend. We'll be back on Monday.