The city's new policy for cell phones will not be a change for most high schools, because they were already looking the other way, but at schools in about 80 buildings with metal detectors, expect to see an adjustment period.

Abraham Lincoln High School in Coney Island is among those rolling out new rules. Principal Ari Hoogenboom said he supported the chancellor's change in policy, because his students used to pay money to park their phones in nearby bodegas or storage vans while they went to class – an equity issue, because kids at schools without metal detectors could just keep their phones in their pockets or backpacks.

Now, Hoogenboom, said Lincoln's rule can be boiled down to 12 simple words: "We don't want to see it, we don't want to hear it."

He said students will be told to put their phones in backpacks, so they can be scanned in machines along with everything else. If they keep them in their pockets they'll have to be pulled aside and scanned with a security wand.

English teacher Corissa Partenio said some of her colleagues at Lincoln worried kids will play games or text each other in class but she doesn't think it will be a big deal. Teachers already deal with other rule breakers, like kids who wear hats in class.

"You tell the kid to take hat off and the kid puts the hat away," she said. "It will probably be the same thing with the cell phone. They will confiscate the cell phones if it becomes an issue."

Hoogenboom said first time offenders will have their phones returned at the end of the day, but those who use their phones a second time will have to wait two days, and so on. The school will also resort to calling parents if students don't obey the rules. But he expected most will comply.

"I told them I figure most of you are phone ready for this world, so I don't really have to worry about that part of your education," he said.

Most schools without detectors already issue warnings or confiscate phones when students use them in class. Janice Geary, principal of J.H.S. 259 William McKinley in Brooklyn, said her staff only confiscated a couple of phones a year in a school of more than 1500 students.

But she said a lot of her kids got the wrong impression when they heard the city was lifting the cell phone ban in schools.

"They are hearing cell phones are going to be allowed in school, cell phones are going to be allowed in school, how great is that? i'm going to call my friend in the other class!"

Geary and other principals said they've been holding assemblies to explain the exact rules for storing or shutting off phones and the penalties.

"We've done an informational blitz with the kids, so I think they know," said Taeko Onishi, principal of Lyons Community School in Brooklyn. "But there was definitely a bit of time when they were like, you can't take our phones anymore."