Districts need to be proactive and transparent explaining how ed tech benefits students as the push to curb screen time and ed tech in schools gains momentum, according to an article in K-12 Dive.
District leaders need to be alert and proactive in communicating about the issue with their communities, says Barbara Hunter, executive director of the National School Public Relations Association.
Showing how technology is benefiting students in the classroom requires strategic communication, she says.
“This is something that districts need to obviously have on their radar,” Hunter says. “I feel like these screen time restrictions are just a one-size-fits-all, and it’s really important for communities to understand what kids are doing in their classrooms as it relates to ed tech.”
The snowballing ed tech pushback is making it increasingly difficult for education leaders to ignore attitudes, especially as state bills have advanced this year to ban or limit technology use in schools. And action is occurring on a more local level. The nation’s second largest school system — Los Angeles Unified School District — approved a resolution on April 21 to create a policy limiting or banning technology based on grade level starting in the 2026-27 school year.
Districts need to see “where their communities stand,” on ed tech, says Hunter. The first step is to gather community feedback and gauge opinions on ed tech use. Information collected should be broken down by feedback on ed tech use at the elementary, middle and high school levels, she says.
“There could be a disconnect between what’s happening in the state legislatures and how communities are really feeling about it,” Hunter says.
Once districts have feedback data, they should create an engagement plan to show community members and even state legislators what is happening in their classrooms with ed tech, Hunter says.
One example of a school’s “powerful” and exciting use of technology, Hunter says, can be seen at Texas’ Texarkana Independent School District where elementary students used 3D printers and ed tech to create prosthetic limbs for people in Uganda.
A toolkit developed last year by the Consortium for School Networking to help educators navigate parents’ concerns about screen time helps prepare schools to answer questions that families have around students’ technology use, such as:
- Why do you use screens in your classrooms?
- Why was my child given their own device for school?
- How often are students using computers in your class?
- How do I stop my child from overusing their screens at home?
- What is the right amount of screen time for a K-12 student?
Parents want more upfront communication and transparency from districts about students’ technology use, as well as the devices and apps they have access to, says Kate Brody, policy director at Schools Beyond Screens, the organization that led the screen time limit push in LAUSD.
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Beyond providing a list of technology being used in the classroom, districts should also allow parents to opt their children in or out of using those tools and provide alternative options if needed, Brody says.
Schools Beyond Screens has grown into a national coalition and is increasingly working with parents from other states to help them push for technology policy limits in their districts, Brody said.
Hunter says district transparency is “super important” around ed tech use in classrooms and how students’ data is being protected. She’s not sure if the issue is that districts aren’t being transparent enough, or if they’re not being intentional about showing how technology is used in their schools.
As artificial intelligence use becomes more commonplace in schools, there is also an opportunity for schools to address the fears and misunderstandings around AI use in schools, Hunter says.
Brody says Schools Beyond Screens wants a moratorium on AI use in classrooms. But she acknowledges that it’s more challenging to get education leaders behind such a policy.
“Instead of making the same mistake we made with a lot of this ed tech, which was to move fast and then try to put guardrails on retroactively, we would like to do the opposite,” Brody says. Until guidelines are in place “for safe and effective use of AI in schools,” she says, districts should in fact implement AI moratoriums.
But for districts currently using AI tools, Hunter says, it’s important for leaders to share how the technology is being used responsibly and in the best interest of students “to prepare them to be productive citizens, particularly digital citizens, in the future.”
K-12 Dive
