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ARDMORE, Pa. — A school board vote in Philadelphia’s wealthy Main Line suburbs has become the latest flashpoint in a nationwide rebellion by parents against the technology their children use in classrooms, as more families say school-sanctioned screens are harming students and undermining their own efforts to limit screen time.
The Lower Merion School District board voted 7-2 on June 15 to repeal a policy that contained language allowing parents to opt their children out of one-to-one use of school-issued devices. The decision drew an eruption of shouts from dozens of parents and children who had packed a high-school auditorium to plead for preserving the opt-out language.
More than 760 parents had signed a petition to keep the policy, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the board’s vote.
“I was in tears,” said Yair Lev, a 49-year-old cardiologist and father of two. Lev described watching his 7-year-old daughter zone out as she used apps on her school-issued Chromebook after he had the principal send the device home for him to inspect. “It’s like the computer stole her,” he said.
Lev helped organize hundreds of families in the district who shared similar concerns. They began attending board meetings to demand more oversight of the district’s digital tools and the right to approve one-to-one devices used by their children.
The June 15 meeting stretched past three hours. Parents, doctors, engineers, teachers and self-described tech advocates took the microphone, drawing cheers from supporters. A middle-school student asked the board: “I want to ask you a question. Who’s a better teacher — a computer or a real teacher?”
Yair Keshet, 45, an architect and father of two elementary-schoolers, criticized board members for accusing parents of “micromanaging” policy. “That is exactly what we should be doing,” Keshet said. “We have a $330 million budget. Can’t we give it some thought? How we’re treating technology?”
Brian Nealis, a robotics engineer with a seventh- and fourth-grader in the district, addressed the superintendent directly. “I’m far from being a Luddite,” Nealis said. But he challenged board members, asking those who had spoken to a teacher about the policy to raise their hands. “Raise your hand if you care about the children in this district,” he said. One board member raised her hand, while the rest of the board sat in silence, according to the Journal.
When the vote came, the audience erupted. Some parents stood, throwing up their hands. A board member asked security guards to remove Rebecca Foscolo, a physician assistant who had come because her son was given an iPad in kindergarten. She stayed put, the Journal reported.
A district spokeswoman said the opt-out language was outdated and that the district is working on a new policy to create “a balanced digital culture.”
The protest in Lower Merion is part of a broader national movement. Parents in Los Angeles have formed a group called Schools Beyond Screens to push for stricter school-tech guidelines. In New York’s Westchester County, parents are demanding tighter Chromebook restrictions, including limits on accessible websites. Some New York City parents have asked schools to pause products and curricula based on artificial intelligence for two years.
School technology expanded rapidly during the Covid-19 pandemic, fueled by federal aid that let districts buy laptops and tablets. A multibillion-dollar ed-tech industry marketed digital tools as a way to transform instruction and help students recover lost ground.
In a survey by EdWeek Research Center cited by the Journal, more than half of educators said tech had a positive impact on student engagement, but a majority also said it negatively affected students’ well-being.
Students in grades one through 12 averaged 52 minutes on school-issued devices during the school day in the past academic year, according to Lightspeed Systems, an educational-software company. Middle-schoolers spent about 70 minutes per day — more than elementary- or high-school students.
Parents in the Lower Merion district described concrete effects they attribute to screen use. Jim Hausman, 59, a real-estate entrepreneur, said his sixth-grade son developed myopia and prebedtime anxiety that he partly blames on the Chromebook the boy uses in school and brings home daily. Hausman described a poker-like game his son downloaded, noting the boy told him “it’s so addictive I can’t stop playing it.” Hausman called it “the electronic fentanyl.”
Alexandra Parfitt, 46, a biostatistician, said she was disappointed to discover her 9-year-old daughter had copied and pasted an internet description of a “Peanuts” character into a school presentation on Google Slides rather than writing it herself. “What has my daughter learned?” Parfitt said. “How to change her profile pic.”
The Journal reported that among the online games parents found was “Five Nights at Epstein’s,” in which players attempt to escape Jeffrey Epstein’s island.