Friday, August 10, 2007

Mayor Compromises on Cell Ban

August 10, 2007 (GBN News): Determined to maintain the NY City public school ban on cell phones in the face of strong parent opposition and a 46-2 City Council vote to allow children to carry phones to school, Mayor Bloomberg says that he has found a way to satisfy parents without forsaking the ban. The Mayor, with Schools Chancellor Joel Klein at his side, today announced a compromise plan to insure parent-child communication without the need for cell phones.

The new plan would mandate that schools set aside three minutes of homeroom period each day for children to select their dinner options from a printed list. Children will choose appetizer, entrĂ©e and dessert, as well as a beverage option, and, using a number two pencil, will enter their choices by filling in bubbles on a computerized answer sheet. The sheets will be collected and fed into the DOE’s ARIS supercomputer, which will analyze the choices and then either email, FAX, or phone the information to parents in time to cook dinner. The Mayor said that the plan would insure that students no longer will need to bring cell phones to school, since determining dinner plans is the only reason they were needed in the first place.

Chancellor Klein added that there will be other benefits to this plan as well. “We in the NY City schools are data driven”, the Chancellor said, “and we will be gathering huge amounts of new data here.” Mr. Klein went on to say, “Of course, this data will now be factored into each school’s report card. We can now evaluate teachers and Principals based on how healthy their students’ dinner choices are. And woe to any teacher whose students eat too many trans fats.”

The Mayor’s plan is slated to be operational in time for the new school year.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

keep it coming gary the news is too depressing without your humor imagine a city and school system run by a man so short sighted he can't remember 9/11 katrina or a bridge that fell just last week how dare he!!

Unknown said...

my child has a cell phone like thousands of other children in the NYC school system that must use public transportation to get to and from school. This is my "life" link to my child. The phone was bought for the express purpose of making sure she gets to and from school safely! It is not used to "decide what she wants for dinner" as the Mayor suggests! Leaving it up to the school to call in an emergency, HAH! My daughter's nose was broken while rollerblading at school in an after school program and no one called me! When she arrived home with a large bandage on her nose and I had to rush her to the hospital, I wondered why we leave all our contact numbers, doctors, etc. to be told by the teacher, it was only a cut. They are not doctors or nurses and yet the Mayor expects to increase their workload by having them call in the event of an emeregency?! What about 9/11, or a tornado like the one that just hit Brooklyn, does he really think the teachers and administrators will sit and man the phones?!
At some point as parents we have to allow our children more responsibility. This includes knowing that the cell phone is not to be used during school hours. If your child can not adhere to the rules than it is our responsibility as parents to take the cell phone away from the child. Wouldn't the teachers time be better spent notifying the parent of misuse than any emergency situation?!

DTGBKLYN said...

Gary, Came up with a plan, since our kids cannot have cell phones, how about confiscating all the blackberries, starting with the chancellor that the DOE has. After all, it just causes them to not pay attention to their surroudings. Like to see you run with that one.

DTGBKLYN said...

Gary, Came up with a plan, since our kids cannot have cell phones, how about confiscating all the blackberries, starting with the chancellor that the DOE has. After all, it just causes them to not pay attention to their surroudings. Like to see you run with that one.

Gary Babad said...

Actually, if you read my GBN News article, "Joel Bounced to Rubber Room" from August 3, you'll be happy to see that Mr. Klein was not allowed to use his Blackberry during his stay in the "Reassignment Center". And he did throw quite a tantrum!