Teachers and faculty in New York City schools say that students are not allowed to use cell phones. Precocious teens, the theory goes, will use their cells to cheat during tests and take pictures of each other in the locker room.

But parents are outraged, saying that in the crazy world we're living in, they feel safer with their children having a way to contact them.

Cellphones are the urban parent's umbilical cord, the lifeline connecting them to children on buses, emerging from subways, crisscrossing boroughs and traipsing through unknown neighborhoods.

Wireless umbilical cords? Technology is just getting so advanced these days. We bet Katie Holmes' baby even has two.

City Schools Cut Parents' Lifeline (the Cellphone) [Elissa Gootman, New York Times]