Before Candace Myers, a senior at the Bronx High School for Writing and Communication Arts, gets to school on Gun Hill Road, each morning she makes sure of two things, that she has her breakfast, and that she meets with her teacher for their secret exchange.

The tradeoff between her and her teacher isn’t something that would put them in jail, but before Candace goes through scanning, the teacher puts her cell phone in her purse and keeps it until the end of the day.

Students in the Bronx are turning to extreme measures to have their phones close at hand. Some bury them, leave it at a bodega or deli for a dollar a day, or even try to sneak in through the side doors of a school building to avoid the metal detectors.

“I leave my phone at the store every day,” said Kingsbridge resident Rahwa Hussein, 17. For $1, a day, the owner and others like him look after the phones of hundreds of students who, like Candace, attend school on the Evander Childs campus. In return, they get a ticket to pick it up at the end of the day. Rahwa’s satisfied with the transaction but “with that dollar, I could be eating,” she said.

This policy isn’t endorsed by the city, but the Department of Education “cannot set policy regarding retailers who do not operate on DOE property,” a DOE spokesperson said in an email.

At a store near the Evander Childs campus, the cell phone storage system has gone through a number of variations. One store used to give out a piece of cardboard with a number on it, but when students started making duplicates of the cards and stealing phones, the store had to come up with the clever system that they have now: laminated cards with the store’s information on one side and the ticket number on the other. One store went as far as building little cubbies behind the counter and numbering them so the workers could find the phones faster.

At the Evander Childs campus, which is home to several small high schools, students caught with cell phones receive either a warning or the phones are confiscated.  Parents are often required to come to the school and get the phone themselves.

“I tried to sneak my phone in, and it resulted in confiscation,” said Unique Scott, 17. Thinking it wasn’t going to ring, he put the whole phone in his pocket, then walked through scanning. That’s when he was asked to empty his pockets by the security guard and it was taken away.

Some students were even desperate enough to put their cell phones in a plastic bag, and bury it on school grounds. A few went missing and this method didn’t last very long because there was too much risk of it being stolen.

According to the DOE spokesperson, the reason cell phones are banned in school is that they “inevitably disrupt learning and security in and around classrooms.”

But several Bronx students interviewed feel like Unique, who said, “We should be able to bring our phones in. It’s a necessity and it completes me!”