Earlier quoted context omitted.
Medical devices, e.g. (some) insulin pumps like the Tandem Mobi, are managed via smartphone apps only. It's an unfortunate fact of life that life supporting technology can increasingly only be interfaced via smartphones. From my perspective, that's an unfortunate but ultimately good reason for some kids to have smartphones.
my kid's phone is used for managing and monitoring t1d, and they will always have their smart phone at hand i don't care what law people think they are putting in place
The law could also use indirect leverage to gradually separate students' medical monitoring from the smartphone over the medium to long term. For example, they could begin a multi-year transition period after which NY-regulated health insurance plans would have to cover a non-smartphone version of these monitoring devices with at least equivalent functionality to any smartphone version they cover, at no greater out-of-pocket cost to the patient, unless no comparable non-smartphone product is on the market from any manufacturer. Then they could eventually require the non-smartphone version in class once it exists, with a fully insurance-paid (no cost-sharing) transition available at that time to children who use the existing smartphone monitoring system.
To avoid a gap in insurance coverage, NY could continue to mandate that some version of these devices be covered, so nobody would go without affordable medical monitoring. But as soon as one company decides to make a non-smartphone version, their competitors would have to do the same or else lose market share in NY, so they all would. (Why would that first company take the leap? They'd get a lot of insurance-paid device purchases for the transition for children's existing devices.) And then teachers would have an ADA-compliant way to remove the distractions of smartphones in class even for kids with medical monitoring needs, without causing harm to anyone.