Pencils over Pixels<\/a>, opposing excessive screen time in school. Michael Balkin, one of their organizers, said they aren\u2019t anti-technology; they just want to see it limited in schools.<\/p>\n\u201cThere are students that have already opted out of one-to-one device use,\u201d he said. \u201cSo in a district like this with the vast resources at its disposal, they can absolutely come up with a plan in … whatever the timeline is to have an opt-out curriculum.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey need some guardrails,\u201d said parent Deena Pack. \u201cThey need some more protections for their brain than what is being provided right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Student Aliyah Pack agrees that stronger restrictions are needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing from a high school senior at Lower Merion High School, I can almost guarantee you the students do not associate the laptops with schoolwork, almost 100%,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
However, the school district said it wouldn\u2019t be ideal for students to opt out of technology that supports most of their curriculum. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that they have access to harmful content, harmful apps, and they\u2019re on it for many hours of the day, and that\u2019s how their curriculum is partially delivered,\u201d added Balkin. \u201cSo we wish the board would take a step back, pause, and actually create a policy that reduces tech overall.\u201d<\/p>\n
The school board will have a second meeting on the new policy in June, and it aims to finalize its new policies by next fall. Along with the inability to opt out, the proposal includes stronger web filters and an app that will allow parents to monitor their child\u2019s school-issued device. The board said it will also review AI policies. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARDMORE, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Parents in the Lower Merion School District are protesting what they call \u201crampant\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[183,185,184,2738,186,87342,521,76335,3315],"class_list":["post-196685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion-headlines","tag-lower-merion-news","tag-lower-merion-school-district","tag-lower-merion-township","tag-lower-merion-school-board","tag-school","tag-screen-time","tag-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}