The first day of the Normandy Schools Collaborative’s “zero tolerance” smartphone ban didn’t quite “go over without a hitch,” observed Norman Campbell, the district’s safety and security director, at the board of education’s meeting last week. Self-regulation is particularly hard, the brief continues, for kids dealing with toxic stress—that is, ones whose systems are overloaded as they cope with things such as “physical or emotional abuse, caregiver substance abuse or mental illness, exposure to violence, and the accumulated burdens of poverty.” At last week’s board meeting, board secretary/treasurer Violet Taylor echoed a concern of many Normandy parents: That some kids walk home alone after school, and now they’ll be incommunicado when they do so.