Board hears mixed early results on cell-phone ban as students and staff urge more data and consistent implementation
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Summary
School leaders presented state-required discipline-referral data and a high-school student survey about the new cell-phone law. Students described ticket-based and restorative approaches; several board members requested comparable middle-school data before making policy adjustments.
The Ithaca Board of Education heard a detailed check-in on the district's implementation of New York's new cell-phone rules on March 24, with students, principals and staff describing different local approaches and several trustees asking for more comparable data before deciding on policy changes.
Administrators said they had submitted the state-mandated discipline-referral figures and shared a high-school student survey assembled by Ithaca High reps and principal Arnold. "Our hope was increased face-to-face communication, increased engagement in learning," the staff member presenting the data said, while noting the survey arrived the same morning and had not yet been synthesized into averages for the board.
The presentation underscored variation across schools. Student representatives from LACS described a ticket system in which phones are collected and returned at the end of the day using a raffle-ticket-style process; another school reported a restorative-justice–based plan run by a restorative-justice committee. "Students put that into action by voting for it in a vast majority," one LACS student representative said, describing a sense of student ownership of the local approach.
Trustees pressed for more systematic information. Several asked why middle-school data were not included; administration said the high-school survey was an informal, student-led instrument and that the state-required reporting focused on discipline referrals submitted through the district’s SchoolTool system. "The policy requires the discipline data, and we can learn a lot from that," the staff presenter said, adding that qualitative surveys and broader k–12 data would be enhancements for future reporting.
Board members raised concerns about data completeness and consistency: one trustee noted that one school showed a single disciplinary incident while another showed zero, asking whether reporting practice or actual incidents explained the discrepancy. The presenter said the district would follow up with building leaders, and several trustees asked that building leaders be invited to report directly on classroom-level practice.
There was debate about timing and scope of additional data collection. One board member proposed directing administration to collect comparable middle-school data; procedural questions followed about whether that motion could be considered immediately. The chair instead directed board officers to meet with the superintendent and the policy lead to clarify what additional information is feasible and to propose a schedule for further reporting.
The board did not take a policy vote on March 24. The discussion ended with an agreement to compile more usable summaries of the high-school survey, request additional school-level context from building leaders and return to the board with recommendations and more complete comparisons across schools.
What’s next: Board officers will meet with administration to scope additional data collection and meeting dates; the board discussed turning the April finance/facilities meeting into a work session to allow more time for follow-up reporting ahead of the next formal review.
