Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces Successful Results of New York’s Nation-Leading Phone-Free Schools Policy

Governor Kathy Hochul today announced the results of a survey to collect feedback from nearly 600 educators statewide at the conclusion of New York's first phone-free school year - and the numbers speak for themselves. Teachers overwhelmingly report that without smartphone distractions their students are more active in class discussion, more engaged with their peers, and more focused on their assignments. Schools across New York State implemented one of the nation's strongest phone-free policies at the start of the school year in September 2025, in line with the requirements of the distraction-free schools law that was enacted by Governor Hochul in May 2025.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Morning, everyone. You sound a little happier, I just got you out of class. First of all, I'm delighted to be here at Schuyler. It's a school with a great reputation, and we know a lot of really smart young people go to school here, and you have some of the best teachers in our entire state, guiding your education process, and a principal, Principal Bruce, who's very passionate about giving all of you the best shot that you could possibly have in in your educational opportunities. I'm also joined by Mark Rampersant, the Chief of School Safety, a very important role to keep our students safe here for the Department of Education, and our superintendent has joined us, and Councilmember Sandy Nurse has joined us. I want to thank her as well.

So I'll just give a few reflections. We got our teachers here. We have our students. But also I was on a journey for well over a year, what I was trying to figure out what was happening to our young people, especially after COVID. There was this detachment. A lot of young people seem to be dealing with mental health crises and depression and anxiety, and life was getting really hard for them, and I wanted to find out why.

I've invested enormous money from the state level in mental health, making sure that our schools have access to this for students, but there's something deeper going on. So I started going around the state, traveling to every corner of New York, gathering students from all levels and teachers and parents and PTA and school administrators and principals, and I wanted to ask the question, "What is going on in our schools?"

And I quickly came to the conclusion that there were severely negative impacts on young people's mental health in classrooms when they could not put down their cell phones. Literally, it became an addiction.

And I knew this because I had a gathering of middle school students once near Albany, and one young woman was telling me, "There's so much pressure all day. We have to check because we might be getting a notification or everybody might be meeting in the girls restroom. I can't miss out." Or, "They might be planning a party on Friday, and I'll miss that, too." Or, "Sometimes they're mocking out what I'm wearing, and I need to know what they're saying." So there was so much stress as she was describing it to me. And I said, "Why can't you just put it down?" And she said to me, and I took this to heart, "You have to save us from ourselves. We can't do this alone." So I'm a mom and when a young person says, "I need your help. You've got to save us from something." I'm there. I'm on the front lines.

I realized there was this addictive device that held their attention throughout the day, kept them engaged and disengaged from the teachers. And then we did a survey of teachers. What's going on in the classrooms? Seventy-two percent of teachers across this country said that because of cell phones in classrooms, that they were no longer making connections with their students. It was harder to teach.

And for teachers, this is their passion. They want to have a personal relationship with each student starting in September, but certainly deepened by the end of the class year. And I heard one teacher say, "It's just frustrating because we've lost that," this, the individual fulfillment a teacher gets from making that connection because they couldn't compete with TikTok dance videos and all the exciting things going on during the day, right?

So I said, "Okay let's find out some more about this." So what I did, brought that information back, I did a full report on it and started conversations in the State Legislature. And it was a tougher haul than I expected because there's a lot of opposition. Because I said, "We need a statewide ban. We cannot have this anymore. We have to save our kids. We have to reset to the way it was before cell phones were allowed in schools." And we had some parents who said, "No, I want to keep that connection during the day. I'm going to worry too much." And we had school boards that said, "I don't want to take on the fight with the parents."And the teachers were saying, "I'm not so sure I want to be the enforcer." And everybody had a reason why we should not do this. And I said, "We're doing it anyhow. We have no choice because our young people desperately need the adults to take the heat." And I said, "I'm a mom. I'm used to getting conflict resolved, people unhappy with me. I'm okay with that when I know I'm doing the right thing." I'll power through that, and that's exactly what we did this time last year, got it passed in our budget. And so starting in September, I'm going to hear from our students and our teachers about how this affected them.

But today, I'm releasing new results from a study we did around the state. It was spread all over New York. About 47 percent of the results came in from New York City, 53 percent from the rest of the state, and over 600 teachers and school administrators said 80 percent reported that the students are behaving better in a more engaged way. They're collaborating more, they're talking to each other, and basically, I read all the comments, they're acting like kids again, feeling that burden lifted from their shoulders, and they're participating in class discussions, and teachers are feeling they can finally teach. And the other one I found fascinating, because I was aware of all the bullying that was going on in schools, much of it online - 60 percent of the responses said that bullying itself was down. Bullying was down. So young people could just go through the day without being harassed and feeling focused on something else other than making connections with friends, making new friends, and doing their schoolwork. So that's what we're supposed to do.

We did something about it. We have finally, kids talking to each other, right? And I want to hear from you directly, but we've been working on this mental health crisis for a long time. One other thing we did, because I don't know, I can't control what happens outside the school days. I know there's a lot of hours when you're at home and supposed to be sleeping at night, and you're not. I know this. We passed the first in the nation legislation to crack down on addictive algorithms that are fed, where you're bombarded all day long with notifications you didn't ask for, even during the night. So we came up with some really strong language to make sure that we can be the first to protect our kids in that space.

So it's like we're having a dance party over there. Some music. That's the school music?

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Okay. Yeah, the bell. That is the coolest school bell I've ever heard. When I was going to school, we did not have cool school bells.

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I hope no one's late to class because we had to turn off the music. But I wanted to talk about what we're doing. We're the largest state in America to have a bell-to-bell cell phone ban, and that means no devices all day long. There's a lot of people wanting us to say what about during physical education class or during lunchtime or…" I said, "No, because then all of a sudden the bad habits will kick in." At lunchtime people should be talking to each other and not, again, staring at a device all day. So we're focused on the addictive algorithms. We're protecting young people. Got new legislation. I won't spend any more time on that because I want to hear from you.

But before I kick it off to the conversation I wanted to ask our school safety officer, the Chief for the entire school district of New York City, Mark Rampersant, to give us some reflections on what your concerns were and what you're seeing now. So thank you very much.

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So you have no choice. You have to actually to learn. And that's a good dynamic, for sure. And, you don't appreciate this now, but learning simple things like making eye contact and working in groups with each other, those are all skills that for a decade our students in schools have not really developed because they didn't have to. Their world could be limited to a device in their hand, and they weren't forced to push themselves and their comfort zone to get to know other people and have the conversation. But when you leave school someday, in the workforce and in your lives, that's really important to have. I feel like for a long time, young people, no fault of their own, they've been more stunted in this area. And I'm so excited that now in New York, as we lead the nation in this, in showing the impact of this, that our students will be more engaged, more collaborative, and ultimately smarter because they're paying attention more in classrooms.

So I think this gives New York State a real advantage, in a competitive environment for jobs later because of what you're learning now. It doesn't feel like it now but playing those games with someone else is an act that you're going to have to do someday in a work setting, like collaborate and solve a problem with each other, and just having friendships in person.

So we're going to continue working on ways to stop the social media companies from literally monetizing and taking personal information and selling it, we ban that for young people. We also have a ban on, as I mentioned, the addictive algorithms from bombarding students. Setting everything on default privacy automatically so parents don't have to try and figure it all out. Because as a mom, I know how complicated it is, and the kids will always outsmart us on these things. So we're going to just do everything we can to protect and just preserve, not your childhood, because you wouldn't consider yourselves children, but your younghood, the time of your life when you should be just freer and having friends and just being more carefree before you enter the rest of your lives.

Any other comments from teachers or our students here? Go ahead.

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When I think about everything I've done in almost five years as Governor, the initiative that was hard fought, but worth the pursuit of it, that has had the most immediate impact - we have a lot of policies, they take some time to go into effect. We're going to build more housing, we're going to have universal childcare, we're going to do all these things. But something that had the most immediate impact has to be this. Because within a few months, I started talking to you, started reporting a different experience altogether, and it was all so much more positive. So this gives me a sense of great pride to know that all of you are worth fighting for in this. And any students want to give closing comments? Any? A couple more.

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That's right, because you're still bombarded with that after school hours and everything. That's why we changed the law. Yeah, New York State will always lead in this space, and I think it'd be smart of other states, and maybe you'd agree, that students all over America should not have the access to a cell phone during school. And they should also adapt what we're doing to protect young people from notifications during the night or having all these, these AI chatbots, developing relationships with young - we have a whole host of reforms we'll talk about another time. But we are leaning hard into this because it is not your fault that there's companies out there making billions of dollars by monetizing your time, taking your time, bombarding you with this.

And we're going to stand up against that on behalf of all of our students. So thank you, everybody. Appreciate it. Thank you.