Sep 10, 2007 2:00 pm US/Eastern
Bloomberg Still Wants Cell Phones Out Of Schools
NEW YORK (AP) ―
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Despite the City Council passing a symbolic bill against the ban on cell phones in public schools, Mayor Bloomberg remains determined to uphold the ban.
AP
The cell phone signal coming from New York's mayor these days is still very clear: He's not going to budge in his fight with the City Council over mobile phones in schools.
Nonetheless, the City Council on Monday overrode Mayor Michael Bloomberg's veto and passed a largely symbolic bill intended to force a change to the ban on cell phones in the nation's largest public school system.
Bloomberg's administration has refused to bend on its tough rule that says schoolchildren cannot have phones in schools, not even turned off and put away.
So the council passed a bill that gives children the express right to carry phones to and from school. The ban applies to inside school buildings, so the measure won't have any effect on that, but parents and other opponents hope it could help their cause.
It could give them a legal tool to challenge the ban in court, or could force the administration to compromise, like by providing special lockers at school entrances where students can store their phones while in the building.
Compromise didn't seem likely on Monday when Bloomberg was asked about the issue, shortly before the council overwhelmingly overrode his veto from a few weeks earlier.
"You've always had the right to take a phone to school, and take a phone from school -- you just don't have the right to bring it into the school, and that's not changing," he said at a City Hall news conference.
Just then, a phone began ringing among the press corps, and Bloomberg seized the opportunity for a comparison.
"Maybe that's a good example -- shame on you," he said as the phone kept bleating and someone fumbled to turn it off. "Think about that. You really want your child's day interrupted many times?"
Bloomberg says children could also use phones to play games, take photographs, cheat, watch movies and text-message each other.
The city has had a school cell phone ban for years, but students carried them without much consequence until last year. When the city began random security checks as part of a crackdown on weapons, it began finding and confiscating hundreds of cell phones, which led to a fierce battle over the policy.
Parents have lobbied the city furiously to change the policy. They say their children need phones for emergencies and security reasons.
(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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