The controversial regulation that prohibits students from bringing cell phones into schools is finally being scrapped, sources told The Post.
The policy reversal was sought for years by students, parents and advocates who saw the devices as an essential lifeline between parents and their kids — particularly on the commute to and from school.
"Finally, someone saw the light!" said civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel, who filed an unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the legality of the ban in 2006.
While parents and students have long opposed the ban, teachers have been less resolute about the matter – with many concerned about cheating, cyber-bullying and their own roles of policing cell phone use.
Former Mayor Bloomberg also vigorously supported the ban for many of the same reasons.
Mayor de Blasio — who admitted that his own son, Dante, violated the regulation as a student Brooklyn Tech HS — vowed during his campaign last year to undo Bloomberg's policy.
De Blasio is expected to announce revised regulations Wednesday at Brooklyn's HS of Telecommunications Arts and Technology.
Sources said the new policy would leave much of the decision-making in the hands of principals, including whether to collect the devices or to simply require students to keep them out of sight.
"The questions the Department of Education has to ask themselves is how do we enforce it?" said George Anthony, a history teacher at Wagner HS on Staten Island.
"What are we going to do if illicit content is found on the phones?" he added. "Hopefully strong leadership can enforce it."
A number of principals contacted by The Post also expressed concerns about the difficulties that lifting the ban will create.
"It's definitely going to cause problems," predicted one school leader. "I catch teachers all the time using their phones even though they're not supposed to."
While electronic devices like cell phones have been banned from schools for more than a decade, the prohibition wasn't aggressively enforced until April 2006 – when the city started using portable metal detectors at randomly-selected schools to reduce violence.
The lawsuit challenging the ban as irrational and unsafe was filed a few months later, but ultimately failed.
When the roving metal detector program was scaled back a few years later, most schools resorted to a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy that allowed kids to carry their phones as long as they kept them out of sight.
The only students who were still heavily impacted by the ban were those enrolled in 88 of the city's roughly 1,200 school buildings that have permanent metal detectors installed.
Many of those kids, whose schools are in the poorest neighborhoods, were compelled to choose between paying to store their phone in cell phone trucks outside of school or leaving the devices at home.
The Post reported in 2012 that the cottage industry for cell phone storage at the time had topped $4 million a year.
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