Two council members want the department to cut back on screen time in city public schools because they said evidence doesn't show that it improves learning.

State lawmakers previously banned cellphones during the school day from bell to bell. Now, the biggest target is YouTube. 

Members Shekar Krishnan and Eric Dinowitz want students blocked from freely using the platform on school-issued devices like iPads.

That doesn't necessarily mean a teacher couldn't show a video for a lesson, but they want the department to prove there's an actual educational reason for using it. 

The City Council says the DOE's use of educational technology has expanded quite a bit since the COVID-19 pandemic. Committee members say they plan to question the DOE's process for technology contracting, how the DOE developed its AI guidance and the impact of the cellphone ban. 

The City Council released a 28-page briefing report reviewing years of research and audits from the city and state that found more screen time and devices don't reliably improve student achievement.

The members are also looking into one-to-one devices given to younger students and whether some testing should go back to pencil and paper.

"I have been concerned about screen time in schools. Very much so, especially for the younger grades. So I'll be watching closely what the City of New York does, but absolutely contemplating what we're gonna do next year when the legislative session resumes on looking at it as a statewide approach. We know we need to do more," Gov. Kathy Hochul said.   

According to the report, during the pandemic, the department bought 511,000 iPads for $287 million, plus about $4 million a month for data.

An audit by the comptroller's office later found the city didn't have a central system to track them, including more than 3,000 cases where students received multiple iPads.

Parents have mixed feelings about the technology.

"There is both pros and cons about it. Like my son has learned a lot from YouTube.Good things," one mother said. "Like if too much exposure is given and you don't restrict and don't like monitor what they are watching, it can go bad."  

"They use iPads in their class and stuff, and that's a good thing. As long as it's just for school," a dad said. 

It happened at 9:30 a.m. outside the William H. Taft High School complex on East 172nd Street near Sheridan Avenue in Claremont, police said. The location houses several schools.

According to police, the teenager was walking to school when he was approached by three suspects. One punched him in the face, and another stabbed him once in the buttocks, police said.

The suspects then ran off.

The victim was rushed to a Harlem Hospital and is recovering.

Steven Nunez, an 11th grader, talked about walking in the area of his school.

"I feel both, like a lot of times safe and unsafe," Nunez said, as he left campus with his mother. "Usually, I try to calm down and mind my own business."

The NYPD is currently investigating. At this point, it is unknown what, if any, connection the suspects have to the school.

Anyone with any information is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477), or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). You can also submit a tip via the Crime Stoppers website or via DM on X, @NYPDTips. All calls are kept confidential.

In separate incidents, guns were also found Monday at public schools on Staten Island and in Queens.

On Staten Island, the NYPD said it got a call at 10:20 a.m. reporting the gun at Curtis High School on Hamilton Avenue near St. Marks Place.

Police took an 18-year-old into custody. The Department of Education said the gun was found in the student's bookbag.

"Weapons have no place in our schools or our city. The incident was quickly and safely addressed by our School Safety Agents, and no students or staff were injured. The gun was safely recovered, after a search was conducted of the student's bookbag. NYPD was called immediately upon discovery of the firearm," the DOE said in a statement.

In the Queens incident, police said a 17-year-old was arrested at 2:30 p.m. at Career Development High School of Queens in Jamaica, after a gun was found in his backpack after it was detected by a scanner.

There was no immediate word on the charges either teenager could face.

The child had to find her own way home. 

Ni-Ima Lattimer, the mother of little Ka'Mylah, was outraged after her daughter knocked on her front door on Sept. 8. 

"Why would you let a 5-year-old little girl walk home by herself?" Lattimer said. 

The girl was supposed to be picked up and dropped off for school not from her home, but from daycare.

"She said, 'Mommy, they dropped me off on the street, and I came home like a big girl,'" Lattimer said. 

Lattimer said she's relieved she was home to answer the door for her child. 

The driver and bus matron apparently bypassed the daycare location and mistakenly dropped Ka'Mylah somewhere in between, and the child navigated her way home on her own. 

The daycare is around the corner, but Lattimer has concerns. 

"She could have been hit by a car. She could have been kidnapped. She could have wandered off and me and other daycare providers wouldn't have known. I'm sorry, but this is not right," Lattimer said.    

"It is district protocol that drivers release kindergarten students to a designated caregiver. We understand the concern this caused and are thankful the student is okay," the First Student Bus Company said. "The driver has been removed from service within the district, is receiving additional training on routes and stops, and strong disciplinary action is being taken."

Lattimer said she is speaking out for parents to beware. 

"They just switched them to another route to be another parent's headache or heartache. Because you never know when this might happen again, or what might happen," she said. 

Lattimer said she congratulated her daughter for being a big girl and able to find her way home on her own, and met with the new bus driver to ensure this doesn't happen again.  

In Hempstead, students born years after that tragic day heard firsthand from those who lived through it.

"The first responders are the lifesavers. They were there day one," said Anthony Knight, who spent weeks working as an electrician on the smoldering pile at Ground Zero.

Knight got choked up remembering those who rushed into the burning towers and never came out. Twenty-five years later, he wants students to know not only what happened, but how people responded.

"Work together, be resilient and volunteer," Knight said.

Dawn Gonzalez' sister Jenine died when the towers fell. She offered a lesson learned through her own grief.

"You will have times in your life where you just maybe think that you can't go on," she said. "And you can find joy and happiness. Give it time."

Friday's lesson wasn't just about looking back; students turned it into action, making care packages for children experiencing homelessness.

"It is our duty to promote the peace and kindness that the community deserves," senior Zubasha Chowdhury said.

"Always check on that person that you care [about], that you love," another student said.

School Superintendent Gary Rush says the message of coming together must be taught year-round.

"Whenever traumatic events like that happen across the country, we band together the most," he said. "We shouldn't have to have traumatic events to maintain the way that we come together."

The students also confronted the hatred behind the attacks.

"If people keep hating on each other, people keep creating more violence, they'll just end up in a cycle of hatred," senior Leandro Amador said.

Students were asked to put into words what 9/11 means 25 years later.

One wrote, "Today, we remember what we can overcome."

Robert was an FDNY firefighter who responded to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. 

"When the second tower fell, he dove under a fire truck as he was trained to do. But, of course, it was crushed. For us, we believe it's a miracle he was found two days later because there are people still waiting to recover loved ones," said Curatolo, the principal at St. Patrick Catholic Academy in Bay Ridge.

Twenty-five years after the attacks, 9/11 is a difficult but important part of the school's curriculum.

"Most of the parents in this school are firefighters, they're police officers, they're medical professionals," Curatolo said.

However, teaching this history a quarter century later presents a unique set of challenges. None of the school's current students were alive that day. But many have parents or loved ones who witnessed the attacks, responded to them or helped save lives.

For eighth grader James Buckley, learning about 9/11 meant interviewing his firefighter father for a project he presented at school.

Buckley said his father's experience also taught him about what happened in the days immediately following the attacks.

"9/11 was the worst day in our history," he said. "Days after, like 9/12, the whole country was just united and together at all times."

His father's proximity to the danger remains difficult for Buckley to think about.

"It's very upsetting that he was that close," he said.

Seventh grader Caterina Autovino also interviewed a loved one. Her mother was commuting to work on a bus when the attacks began.

"She saw the first plane crash into the north tower of the World Trade Center," she said. Autovino recalled the fear her mother described from not knowing what was going to happen next.

For teachers who experienced 9/11 themselves, teaching the history comes with a different responsibility.

Mary Kate O'Neill, an eighth-grade homeroom teacher, was a child when the attacks happened. She remembers watching adults around her try to understand and explain what was happening.

Students sometimes ask her how faith fits into a tragedy like 9/11.

"Sometimes students will ask, well, where was God that day? If this happened?" she said. "There's so many stories of people who missed the bus that day. Couldn't get on the train, never made it over the bridge...that's where God was."

O'Neill is now married to a firefighter who was inspired to join the profession after 9/11.

For her, passing the history on to students means handling the memories with care.

"It feels delicate," she said. "It's important to make sure that I pass it on correctly."

At St. Patrick Catholic Academy, educators say those personal stories are what keep the memory of Sept. 11 alive for a generation that never experienced it firsthand.

Have a story idea or tip in Brooklyn? Email Hannah by CLICKING HERE.

Kids in Washington Heights got a special welcome back from Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels as they launched the 2-K program. The free program is rolling out in select neighborhoods, providing free preschool for more than 2,000 children.

"While this morning has brought a new kind of stress to thousands of young families across the city, it is the stress of excitement and new beginnings," Mamdani said.

The city is also reforming its public schools procurement system, which it says will save more than $100 million over the next two years, partially by modernizing and eliminating what it's calling unnecessary contracts.

"We are modernizing decades-old software so orders for paper and pencils will no longer fall through the cracks," Mamdani said.

"We're training more than 10,000 employees. We're creating oversight and timeline procurement processes that are faster, ensuring that every single request and question is answered within one business day," Samuels said.

Also starting this year, the city is banning artificial intelligence in public schools until students reach high school. However, education leaders say they are still making an effort to ensure that technology is safe by partnering with the companies that produce it.

Microsoft and the teachers' unions announced an agreement Wednesday, banning the technology giant from tracking city students. It also can't use student or teacher data to train AI models. Additionally, it won't allow AI systems to make decisions in schools without human oversight.

"Everybody has to understand this. The key to all teaching is the relationship between the teacher and the student. Nothing else will work if you don't have that," United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said.

The start of the school year is also coming with some setbacks for students with disabilities. A bus shortage has caused about 2,000 students to have no transportation lined up, according to the nonprofit Advocates for Children.

The Department of Education is providing free rideshare vouchers as a temporary option.

Toward the end of the day, Mamdani met hip-hop legend Fat Joe at the just-opened Bronx School of Hip Hop. After the star rapper, producer and businessman left, the mayor kept touring the school and learned about how it is designed to teach traditional academic subjects through elements of hip-hop culture. 

To mark 25 years since 9/11, the City Council launched a webpage to keep the memory of that day alive with an interactive map highlighting 248 locations commemorating those killed that day and families impacted. It includes 26 new sites approved Thursday, including:

• Ladder 3 September 11th Memorial Way on East 13th Street between Third and Fourth avenues in Manhattan,
• Tunnel to Towers Intersection at Hamilton Avenue and Bowne Street in Brooklyn,
• Never Forget Way at 84th Street and 157th Avenue in Queens,
• Endor Community Garden 9/11 Memorial Way at Fieldston Road and West 253rd Street in the Bronx, and
• Staten Island September 11th Postcards Memorial Way at the intersection of Richmond Terrace and Hamilton Avenue.

Council Speaker Julie Menin says the council plans to continue to add more spots to honor those involved in 9/11 and its aftermath.

"It really is a living memorial, for lack of a better word. We absolutely want to add to it," she said.

"The co-naming gives those New Yorkers a permanent place in the landscape of the city they called home," Councilmember Virginia Maloney said.

The council, which has already allocated $1 million to give New York City students tours of the 9/11 Museum and Memorial, now wants the state to step in and develop a curriculum on 9/11 that would be taught in all schools throughout the state.

"We have a whole generation of students who were not here on 9/11," Menin said. "And it is so important that they learn about what transpired on that day, what the terrorists were trying to take away from us."

"We should teach the facts of September 11th, who attacked us, what happened, and who was murdered," Councilmember Joann Ariola said. "Today's vote is about making sure that history is not forgotten."

For members of the City Council, it's all about a commitment to never forget.

A Long Island high school is on a mission to keep that promise by passing memories from one generation to another.

Like so many towns across the Tri-State Area, the hamlet of Commack in Suffolk County has for the last quarter-century honored the memory of those who died on or after 9/11.

"I felt in my heart that I had to do something, and that was to never forget," said Debbie Virga, district clerk for the Commack School District.

The memorial at Commack High School displays a piece of World Trade Center steel, part of what was a stairwell support beam, recovered at Ground Zero. Commack became the first school district to receive such an artifact when it was sent to the district by the Port Authority nine years later.

That was the same year junior Alexis Cherney was born.

Cherney said she feels lucky to go to school in a district that prioritizes the preservation of a memory she and her classmates don't have.

"Our English teachers will have us read articles from that day. Our history teachers will tell us all about it and where they were," Cherney said.

"What we learned about that day and just having this memorial just gives us knowledge every day when we walk by about what happened. I think every school district should teach that," recent Commack High graduate Daniel McDonough said.

"We try to set the stage for them," teacher Chris Denton added.

The events of 9/11 and their aftermath are part of Denton's curriculum, a responsibility that he says becomes more important each year as his students have fewer and fewer direct connections to 9/11 victims.

"When we did this 20 years ago, half the class knew someone," Denton said. "Not having that direct contact with what happened 25 years ago, the students now need to have that information."

"It helps the kids whose parents may not want to talk about it. They get an understanding of it. I think that's really important. We say 'never forget,' even though we don't remember. We should still remember what happened, and there's people still suffering to this day," Cherney added.

Eventually, history is taught from history books, but at Commack High School, for now, it's taught from memory.

On this Sept. 11, the high school will feature an aerial tribute with 500 drones above its football field, and in October, the school will host the Tunnel to Towers Mobile Museum.

According to the organization Advocates For Children, an estimated 2,000 city students with disabilities are about to start the school year with no transportation lined up.

The organization sent CBS News New York what it says is a letter the Department of Education sent to school leaders in August.

"Due to a shortage of available school bus vendors and increased transportation needs, some yellow bus routes may not have a vendor available to operate the route at the start of the school year," it reads, in part.

The letter also says the DOE is providing free rideshare vouchers as an interim option, but because these are students with disabilities, parents must accompany their children to and from school in these rideshares, which may not be easy for working parents.

One mom in Queens whose son has autism told CBS News New York the vouchers only pay for the parent to be taken home after their child is dropped off, but will not cover the parent being taken straight to work afterwards or picked up from work in the afternoon for pickup.

That mom said she decided a while ago to take days off from work Thursday and Friday to get her son to school herself. She doesn't know if or when her son's bus will come Thursday morning, and she says she's not waiting around to find out.

CBS News New York reached out to the DOE for an update on whether it has been able to find bus vendors for these families at the 11th hour, but we did not hear back.

The city's Department of Transportation says the slow zones have been set up at more than 200 locations, with 800 expected to be in place by the end of the year. 

"Every student deserves to feel safe when they make their way to school, and every parent deserves the same peace of mind," Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. 

"We are using innovative tools to help keep children safe at school, from new street designs to an expansion of our School Slow Zones through our Sammy's Law commitment," DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn said. 

In addition, the city will install its first-ever Open Streets gate outside a school on Clarkson Street in Tribeca so the street can be closed to traffic and used for play and learning. It's part of a street redesign that will also include additional public seating and expanded pedestrian space. 

"For too long, we've asked parents to rush their kids across intersections that were built for speed, not for safety: That has to change," Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal said. "I'm elated DOT is moving forward with a robust slate of proposals to improve safety for Manhattan's school children, including expanding 15 MPH school slow zones under Sammy's Law, implementing an Open Street Gate on Clarkson St. and advancing street redesigns in front of more than 300 schools in 2026 alone."    

For a full list of Open Streets schools, where the street is closed to traffic but open to use by students, click here.   

Three years later, that policy has frustrated neighbors and local leaders.

Now, with a new university president promising to create more access to the campus in some ways, the pressure is on to open those gates once again.

With a literal lock and chain on the gates for nearly three years, the closed Columbia campus has become a growing source of tension between the university and the community around it.

Students and local leaders organized a rally to reopen the campus on the first day of classes Tuesday.

"These gates represent more than just access. It's about democracy," State Sen. Cordell Cleare said.

"I've had enough of the excuses," Assemblyman Jordan Wright said.

The gates closed back in 2023 at the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. Columbia has kept restricting access ever since.

Those in favor of reopening the gates say closing them has not only been unfair, it has been illegal.

The campus stretches several blocks between Broadway and Amsterdam avenues, forcing people without a Columbia ID to walk around.

"We know what needs to be done. We know how it's affecting the community," said Victor Edwards, chairperson of Manhattan Community Board 9.

Students see both sides.

"Both pros and cons to it," student Sarah Suci said.

"I do feel safer ... but I do understand that it should be open to the New York community," student Anna Avvad said.

"There's no reason that we should be cut off from the livelihood," student Esther Gold added.

Jennifer L. Mnookin, the new university president, said in a letter to the Columbia community Monday that she plans on taking three initial steps intended to move Columbia toward increasing access to the campus, including setting up a campus access advisory committee, expanding campus guest access, and installing new service kiosks at the 116th Street entrance.

"Reopening our gates responsibly will require us to learn from our recent experience, assess risks, listen to different perspectives, and be willing to adjust as circumstances change," Mnookin wrote, in part.

The university president also stressed that the first three steps are not the final word on campus access, nor a substitute for the more fundamental work ahead.  

New York City Councilmember Shaun Abreu said the school needs to act faster.

"We've seen the conditions for over a century, that keeping the campus open is safe," he said.

It was also the first day of year seven of the district's 10-year plan to transform the system. 

Enrollment is up, and graduation rates are nearly 90%. Chronic absenteeism has dropped more than 40% since Newark launched its 10-year transformation plan. 

"Year seven of the strategic plan is super critical. It focuses on the next three years and the decade after," Superintendent Roger León said. 

The push is also getting more academically challenging this year, with more writing, more public speaking, and more advanced classes for high schoolers.

Cellphones are also no longer allowed in the classroom, hopefully cutting back on some of the distractions.   

"We've been planning for this since last school year with a committee that I established with students, parents and teaching staff members to really provide us the guidance that we're implementing today," León said.

Students were excited to be back at Elliott Street Elementary, and ambitions are already high among its 830 students. 

"I want to get all A's on my report card," a fourth grader named Ava said. 

Elliott Street Elementary Principal Marissa Falcon says a big focus is making sure second graders are prepared for third grade. 

"It's a big jump to go from the early literacy grade to then have to take this big, important test," Falcon said. 

The district is still building, with 12 new schools in six years. This year, the New Media High School is adding another career-focused pathway for students while more movie studios are moving into the area. 

"We know that Lionsgate and studios are opening in the South Ward," Leon said. "We will teach students how to become camera people, producers, directors."