Roy C. Ketcham High School

New Cell Phone Ban Notification – Summer 2025

Bell-to-Bell Cell Phone Ban

On August 13th, we posted information about the New York State law banning all cell phones and other internet-capable devices in schools. 

Our District Administrators and our Junior and Senior High School Administrators have been working to create alignment across all of our secondary schools as it pertains to this bell to bell cellphone ban, and we wanted to restate our expectation for student devices upon entry into the school building.  

Our expectation is that students, upon entry into school, will store their cellphones and other personal internet-capable devices in their district-assigned lockers, and that they will leave those devices in their lockers for the duration of the school day.  

In addition to sharing our expectations we would like to share the range of consequences we have established to address students who are not in compliance with our expectations:

• If a student is found to have a cellphone or any other internet-capable personal device on their person after the start of first period they will receive a referral resulting in a verbal warning.  

• If a student is found for the second time to have a cellphone or any other internet-capable personal device on their person after the start of first period they will receive a referral resulting in the cellphone or device being be held for the rest of the day in an administrative office.

• If a student is found for the third time to have a cellphone or any other internet-capable personal device on their person after the start of first period they will receive a referral resulting in the cellphone or device being be held for the rest of the day in an administrative office, and in addition, it shall be held for the duration of each school day for 5 school days in the administrative office (if the device is brought to school), or with a note from a parent indicating they left the device at home.

• If a student is found for the fourth time to have a cellphone or any other internet-capable personal device on their person after the start of first period they will receive a referral resulting in the cellphone or device being be held for the rest of the day in an administrative office, and a parent or person in parental relation must pick up the cell phone from school.

• If a student is found for the beyond the fourth time to have a cellphone or any other internet-capable personal device on their person after the start of first period they will receive a referral resulting in the cellphone or device being be held for the rest of the day in an administrative office, and a parent or person in parental relation must pick up the cell phone from school, and the student will have to serve a detention or an in school restriction for each subsequent offense.

As we have stated in our previous notification, the district will exercise reasonable care to maintain the security of devices that are held by the district, but cannot guarantee the devices will be secure.  If a student has a medical or academic exception, we’ll examine alternative ways to approach this, including different storage or access provisions.

We are all looking forward to the 2025-2026 school year, and we know this new law and these new expectations will take a little bit of time to get used to.  But we hope that together we can create a school culture and climate where the lack of access to a cellphone will be seen as a positive change, and that a distraction free school will result in a healthier learning environment for everyone.