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Cell Phone “Valets” at New York City Schools; Students Pay to Store Devices in Trucks (1170L)

Notes on my thoughts,

A converted disability-access van that's parked a block away on school days is painted

reactions and questions as I

bright blue and labeled "Pure Loyalty Electronic Device Storage." The owner is Vernon

read:

Alcoser, 40, who operates trucks in three of the city's five boroughs. Alcoser would not

comment, even though the names of news outlets that have run stories about Pure

Loyalty are affixed to his trucks. Pure Loyalty employees chatted but would not give

their names as students from the Washington Irving complex lined up on a drizzly

morning to surrender their phones.

"Next, next, have the phone off, have the money out," an employee yelled as the teens

texted and listened to music until the last possible second. At the truck window, each

student exchanged a phone and a dollar for a numbered yellow ticket. "It's not that much

of a hassle unless it's really crowded," said Gramercy Arts sophomore Chelsea Clouden.

"My whole four years I've been putting my phone in this truck, and it's been great," said

Melquan Thompson, a senior at the High School for Language and Diplomacy. "Only a

dollar. It's not bad."

The cell phone trucks appear to be unique to New York City. "That is hilarious," said

Debora Carrera, a high school principal in Philadelphia who had never heard of a phone

storage truck. "Wow. It is very strange." At Carrera's school, Kensington Creative and

Performing Arts High School, students operate a cell phone storage room where phones

can be dropped off in the morning at no charge and picked up after school. For many

teens, it would be unthinkable to leave the devices at home all day, Carrera said. "Their

phone is like a family member," she said. "It's like a pet. They love it."

For parents, the phone may be the only way of communicating with a teen who

commutes two hours to school and gets home at 8 p.m., after sports practice. "In this

day and age, it's ridiculous that the Department of Education doesn't allow us to store

them on site," said Robin Klueber, the PTA president at Frank McCourt High School on

Manhattan's Upper West Side. Frank McCourt, named for the late writer and teacher,

shares a metal-detector building with several other schools. Some students store their

phones in a truck, and others use a nearby shoe store, Klueber said. She wishes the city

Department of Education would let the PTA run a storage room instead.

"In this day and age, especially when many of us still feel the scare of 9/11, students

should be able to travel with their phones," Klueber said. "Many of these kids come

from other boroughs and participate in after-school activities where they are far from

home late into the evening." The Department of Education did not comment on whether

lockboxes in schools were being considered. Spokeswoman Marge Feinberg said only,

"We have a longstanding policy that does not allow students to use cell phones in

schools. It is in Chancellor's Regulation A-412, and there are no plans to change this."

Matthews, K. Cell phone “valets” at New York City schools; students pay to store devices in trucks. Huffington Post

October 4, 2012.

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