WATERTOWN, N.Y. (WWTI) - The 2025-26 school year is upon us and schools across New York State is in the inaugural year of its cellphone policy.

Governor Kathy Hochul today launched a new website located at ny.gov/phonefree. The site allows parents and students across the state to look up their school’s plan for implementing bell-to-bell smartphone restrictions this fall.

The website allows New Yorkers to search for each school's policy by district or school name across the 1,050 public school, charter districts and BOCES programs around the state that have enacted plans.

This year marks the first with that requires bell-to-bell smartphone restrictions in K-12 schools statewide.

This is 96-percent of the nearly 1,100 districts and schools around New York covered by the statewide require

See Full Page