Next week, 2,000 Niagara Falls students will start the new year in the high school. And they will have a major policy change meant to eliminate screen time on their phones.
This will be the first school year with New York State’s new ban on cell phones during school hours, announced earlier this year as part of the state’s 2025 fiscal year budget. New York is one of 18 states and the District of Columbia to have such a ban, allocating $13.5 million in the budget toward school storage plans.
“They’re going to emerge as more well-rounded, more adjusted, more well-educated students than we’re doing right now,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday morning during a roundtable discussion at Niagara Falls High School. It featured Niagara Falls Superintendent Mark Laurrie, Lackawanna City Schools Superintendent Nadia Nashir, and staff and students from Niagara Falls High School.
For Niagara Falls, around 3,500 pouches from the company Yondr will be distributed to 7th- through 12th-graders during student orientation, which they will keep for the whole year. The district reportedly spent around $90,000 on this pouch system, one-third of which the state can reimburse, with each pouch having a slip for putting a student’s name inside and the district has each pouch identified by number.
These pouches have a magnetic locking pin for keeping the phones and other devices like Apple watches inside, which would be placed in the student’s locker. The only way these pouches can be unlocked is with specialized magnets placed throughout the school in boxes that are padlocked during the day.
If a student is caught with their phone out, the district has a four-step disciplinary process, which starts with a warning, then goes up to the district calling a student’s parents to take their phone away.
For any parents trying to reach students due to an emergency, Laurrie said parents can either call the main office or get the Remind application so they can have their kids’ school schedules. They can also send teachers’ messages for their students.
Lackawanna was one of the first state school districts to implement a cell phone ban before the state made it policy, having implemented it the last school year. While Nashir said the students had appreciated the time they were disconnected from their phones, the district needed to build trust with the parents since they were disconnected from their children.
“I think the outcomes did surprise us,” Nashir said. “We have decreased discipline, we have increased engagement, and our parents, I really do believe, they trust us more.”
Incoming senior Harjyot Kaur, who serves as student representative on the district board of education, was part of the round table discussion. She hopes this leads to her making more friends, seeing violence decrease, and increased academic performance from her peers.
“Every time I walk into a lunchroom, I see heads. I don’t see faces, I don’t see smiles,” Kaur said. “I feel like the breaks are what make the policy good. I’ll be able to say, ‘Hey, how are you?’ I’ll be able to connect face-to-face rather than text.”
Laurrie said the district believes in the pouches as an interim step for this culture shift, with everybody needing to work together to make it happen properly.
“I know this is going to take some work and we’re going to have some bumps and bruises,” Laurrie said. “This is how it has to be and we’re going to work together.”