Unfounded reports of a gunman laying siege to a Manhattan high school put the school on lockdown on Thursday – but panicked parents protested a ban on mobile phones after the incident.
A 911 call about an “unknown person locked in a school bathroom with a gun” at Louis D. Brandeis High School at 9:40 a.m. sent worried parents rushing to the Upper West Side campus for information.
Mom Selina Elias told the Post, “What if we never get his phone call?”
Elias, whose daughter Adriana Vega is a junior student at the Urban Careers for Green Education on campus, said the ban was only lifted this year.
“Because she has her cellphone, I was able to find out this morning that the school was closed,” he said. “Otherwise, the school didn’t contact us at all.”
The entire campus — which was divided into several smaller schools after struggling with irregular attendance, safety issues and low graduation rates for several years — was placed on lockdown for an hour and a half. Officials said the lockdown came after police searched the buildings and found nothing.
The scare comes as the city is considering a district-wide ban that would go into effect by 2025. Concerns from parent and teacher unions and logistical complexities have stalled progress on the plan.
Aaliyah Thompson, 15, a junior at Urban Careers for Green Education High School, said she had been keeping track of the lockdown through social media on her phone.
“I saw on Instagram that some of the kids were like the SWAT team was coming in on the first floor. They were taking kids out one by one,” he said.
“I'm glad (I had my phone) I texted my mom and dad,” Alia said. “My dad was telling me about everything that was going on. He was telling me from a distance what he was doing.”
The campus has five smaller schools, including four high schools: Frank McCourt High School, the Global Learning Collaborative, Innovation Diploma Plus, and the Urban Assembly for Green Careers.
The fifth school is Upper West Success Academy, a charter elementary school that is part of the popular Success Academy network of charter schools.
The Global Learning Collaborative is the only school where cellphones are banned.
Earlier on Thursday, Chancellor David Banks cited the “complications” of the phone ban during an interview with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer.
“I've heard from a lot of parents who said, 'Absolutely not,' because they're seeing tragedies in schools. We just saw (the Georgia school shootings) a week ago. Parents are scared,” Banks said.
On the contrary, he said there was no doubt that the phone was a “distraction.”
“Kids can't concentrate on their work because they're too attached to their phones,” he said.
Speaking to the Post, Banks confirmed that “about 350 schools have already banned cellphones, and based on our initial survey this summer, more than 500 schools are considering adopting the policy this year.”
