Calling All Principals

Calling Mayor Mike . . .
Oh, wait, on school days, school children cannot make any calls thanks to the city’s imposed - and enforced - cell phone ban.
We think this is a very ill-conceived and wrong-headed idea.
We say let parents parent their own children. It is not Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s job - nor Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s - to say that students cannot bring cell phones with them to school. They can say that children must not use them in school or classrooms and enforce that ban as they do the ban on Ipods, radios, CD players and other distracting electronics.
However, in this post-9/11 world, with the war against terrorism remaining large on the nation’s agenda, kids need to be able to keep in touch with their parents or guardians at all times.
Students should not be making social calls or be text messaging each other in class, but in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, we feel that some system of emergency contact should be in place in all city schools in order to keep our children safe.
Currently, colleges are examining the prospect of text messaging emergency notices. But in our high schools, how can that be accomplished if the students cannot even carry their phones?
In today’s day and age of instant gratification, instant messaging - instant everything - why are we blocking the potential to save lives?
Our high schoolers have to travel using public transit - often taking more than one bus or train - to and from school. With staggered starts, longer school days and schedules loaded with extracurricular activities, children should be able to stay in touch with their parents before and after school hours.
Conversely, parents who are working longer hours and volunteering more should be able to communicate with their kids if they will be late picking them up from school.
One parent who sued the Department of Education over the cell phone ban, Ellen Weisman, pointed to her oldest daughter who was being stalked while in high school. She needed to stay in touch with her before and after school for her daughter’s safety.
“I don’t think that the School Chancellor has a right to tell me as a parent how to keep my child secure,” Weisman told The Queens Courier.
The parents who filed the suit took some solace in the fact that Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lewis Bart Stone, while upholding the current cell phone ban law, wrote that school principals could authorize students to carry their phones in special cases or if the student was in a non-disruptive situation.
We say to all principals, it is up to you to set policy. Make the right choice in this issue and allow the kids to carry a cell phone to and from school.
Let us not wait for a tragedy in our schools to change a wrong-headed policy made by Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein.