At home, Pooja Garg\u2019s children don\u2019t have phones or tablets. She monitors what they watch on Netflix.<\/p>\n
But when her sixth grader goes to school in the Lower Merion<\/a> School District, \u201che\u2019s gaming all the time,\u201d Garg said \u2014 on a school-issued Chromebook. When Garg has volunteered during indoor recess, kids are playing on computers.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not thinking critically,\u201d Garg said. \u201cThey\u2019re on their laptops.\u201d<\/p>\n Garg was among dozens of Lower Merion parents, and some students, who voiced their frustrations with the district\u2019s use of technology at a community meeting Monday at Harriton High School.<\/p>\n The meeting came amid a mounting parental backlash to technology in schools that has been playing out in communities across the region, and country.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re hearing from parents constantly on this issue,\u201d said Alex Bird Becker, a Wallingford-Swarthmore parent who is co-lead of PA Unplugged, a group pushing back on devices in schools.<\/a><\/p>\n As states have increasingly barred cell phones in schools \u2014 Gov. Josh Shapiro<\/a> has called on lawmakers to pass a bell-to-bell ban in Pennsylvania<\/a> \u2014 Becker said many parents see phone bans as a \u201cforegone conclusion\u201d and have turned their attention to what they consider a more pervasive problem: laptops.<\/p>\n \u201cHow am I supposed to have my child learn, if they have this distracting device on their desk at all times?\u201d Becker said.<\/p>\n Laptops have become part of the fabric of the school day in Lower Merion and other districts around the Philadelphia region \u2014 used for everything from learning programs to digital textbooks. One parent at the Lower Merion meeting said her child had to open a laptop to request a bathroom pass.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: Suburban parents say they\u2019ve been sucked into smartphone \u2018whirlpool.\u2019 Now, they want the devices out of schools.<\/a><\/p>\n Some of the technology usage in schools has ramped up since the pandemic, when there was a push to ensure every child had a school-issued device<\/a> to complete virtual instruction.<\/p>\n Those devices were the topic of most of the concerns confronting Lower Merion Superintendent Frank Ranelli and a panel of 22 administrators, board members, teachers, and students Monday. Parents raised alarm about the ways in which screens and technology had become increasingly present during the school day.<\/p>\n Ranelli told the crowd the meeting wasn\u2019t intended to be confrontational. \u201cWe\u2019re all on the same team,\u201d he told parents.<\/p>\n But not all parents saw it that way \u2014 accusing the district of taking a misguided approach that was weakening the quality of education.<\/p>\n Eleanor Stanford, a parent of two Lower Merion graduates and an 11th grader, said her youngest son has to read fewer books in school than his siblings did, and \u201cthe amount of writing they have to do almost doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n When kids do write, \u201cthey\u2019re using AI,\u201d said Stanford, who teaches writing at Bryn Mawr<\/a> College. \u201cWe\u2019re preparing them to be servants to AI.\u201d She said the district\u2019s focus should be on teaching students how to think, rather than using technology, which she argued they would learn intuitively.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are a district that has so much money and so many resources. We can do whatever we want and still get the highest test scores. Why don\u2019t we do something that\u2019s actually innovative?\u201d Stanford said, drawing applause.<\/p>\n Lower Merion doesn\u2019t have a full ban on cell phones; the district\u2019s \u201cOff and Away\u201d rules call for students to store their phones during classes, but allow kids to use phones at lunch.<\/p>\n Some parents complained Monday that the phone rules were inconsistently enforced, or not at all \u2014 pressing Lower Merion to not wait for the state to enact a ban.<\/p>\n An effort to opt out of Chromebooks<\/p>\n Scott Weinstein, assistant to the superintendent, said there were \u201cpendulum shifts\u201d in education, and that schools \u201cprobably went too far\u201d in adopting new technology.<\/p>\n Now, \u201cwe\u2019re trying to strike the right balance,\u201d Weinstein said. \u201cWhat we don\u2019t want to do … is overcorrect and get rid of it completely.\u201d<\/p>\n Several administrators and teachers spoke about the value of technology. Ashley Rosenbaum, a kindergarten teacher at Merion Elementary, said iPads allow her to provide differentiated instruction to entering kindergarteners, some of whom have never been in school before, while others know their letters and can write their names.<\/p>\n \u201cThe iPads are used very sparingly,\u201d said Rosenbaum, who is also a district parent. \u201cI send my son to school and I trust his teachers. I teach children because I love children. I want to work with them \u2014 I don\u2019t want their faces in an iPad.\u201d<\/p>\n Numerous parents, however, voiced skepticism of the district\u2019s educational technology products, and asked about opting out of using Chromebooks.<\/p>\n Yair Lev, a parent of a second grader at Cynwyd Elementary who has been organizing webinars with advocates against technology in schools \u2014 including an upcoming talk with neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath, author of The Digital Delusion \u2014 said that educational technology companies had been pushing products with unproven results.<\/p>\n Lev said 20 families from his child\u2019s grade were planning to opt out of using Chromebooks next year \u2014 and \u201copt in to traditional education,\u201d relying on pen and paper.<\/p>\n Ranelli told parents they could not opt out. \u201cYou\u2019re basically opting out of our curriculum,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s not the plan, though 20 families might want that.\u201d<\/p>\n Subashini Subramanian, another parent of a Cynwyd second-grader, said she wanted to see how her daughter fared without a Chromebook for a year, to see if her academics suffered without using it.<\/p>\n \u201cBasic foundation has to be learned with pen and paper, someone teaching you,\u201d said Subramanian, who voiced concern with online reading and math programs her daughter\u2019s school uses for about 20 minutes a day.<\/p>\n Subramanian said she had heard reports of middle schoolers on Chromebooks for four to five hours a day, \u201cand I\u2019m scared.\u201d<\/p>\n Ranelli said the district looks at \u201chow long kids are online a day,\u201d but didn\u2019t share any figures.<\/p>\n Inappropriate content and cheating on Chromebooks<\/p>\n Beyond the opt-out requests, parents questioned why students were able to access inappropriate content on their Chromebooks. One mother said her son reported that kids were playing a game called Five Nights at Epstein\u2018s, in which players are on an island <\/a>with financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n Earlier in the meeting, the district\u2019s director of information technology, Robert Catalano, said the district was \u201cconstantly updating\u201d its filters to block access to games, though \u201cat times, it\u2019s like Whack-a-Mole.\u201d<\/p>\n