Public-school students should be cell-ebrating next year when a new mayor takes over.
All but one of the major candidates running to succeed Mayor Bloomberg declared yesterday they’d overturn his edict banning students from bringing cellphones to school.
Comptroller John Liu led the digital charge during a technology forum at New York Law School sponsored by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.
“We can’t say to our kids we want them to access the Internet, to learn on the Internet, and then when it comes to school take away the only device they have to access the Internet,” Liu said before a crowd of hundreds gathered to hear ideas for expanding the tech economy.
He vowed to change the policy on Day 1 of his administration.
When moderator Ben Smith asked if any other candidate would do the same, the other four Democrats on the panel and Independence Party contender Adolfo Carrión nodded their heads or motioned to signify yes.
Republicans Joe Lhota and John Catsimatidis later told The Post they were on board as well.
The lone holdout in the cellphone emancipation was Republican George McDonald, who raised the same issue as Bloomberg.
“Whether its cyberbullying or ‘Angry Birds,’ students have enough distractions and teachers have enough challenges in the classroom,” he said.
Except for Liu, the candidates suggested that phones be checked at the door and retrieved when classes let out.
“In 21st century life — and we were reminded of that last week in the Boston attack — children need to be able to get in touch with their parents and their parents need to be able to get in touch with children,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
Former Comptroller Bill Thompson described the phones as necessary in emergency situations.
Public Advocate Bill de Blasio questioned how parents could monitor their kids without knowing if they made it to and from school safely. “His policy absolutely ignored those parental realities and parental rights,” he said.
De Blasio conceded a check-in system would have to be created but called that a “minor inconvenience” compared to the benefits.
That system would have to be extensive. Officials said there are 179,776 students enrolled in junior high schools and 254,182 in high schools — meaning space and personnel would be required to handle tens of thousands of phones twice a day.
About 90 schools are currently equipped with metal detectors.
During another part of the forum, de Blasio drew loud chuckles when he called on the city to go all out in overtaking Silicon Valley on the tech front and impersonated a former California governor to get his point across.
“If Arnold Schwarzenegger were here, he’d say, ‘Northern California, your domination of the tech industry is terminated,’ ” de Blasio joked in a mock Austrian accent.
Quinn, who’s been on the receiving end of most of de Blasio’s political attacks on the campaign trail, interjected jokingly, “I’m terminating all accents that are not actually yours.”