At a Lower Merion Township school board meeting that drew more than 100 protesters, the focus was not whether digital devices belong in classrooms, but whether families should be able to opt out. Parents who pressed for such an option said screens can derail learning and invite off-task behavior, while board members argued that technology is now too integrated into the curriculum to allow hundreds of students to be exempted.
High school senior Aliyah Pack, whose family asked the district to remove her laptop after her grades fell, described difficulty staying engaged during screen-based learning. She said she finds it hard to concentrate when she’s learning from a screen and described the effort of shifting into a school mindset. “It’s very hard to get into the mindset of being in school,” Pack said, adding that she has watched Netflix in class on her school laptop by hiding earbuds behind her hair.
Pack’s mother raised concerns with the district after her grades started to decline, according to the account presented at the meeting and in interviews. The family was told, however, that taking away the laptop was not possible.
Protesters at the Monday night meeting emphasized they were not anti-technology. They said digital skills are important life competencies, but argued that devices should not dominate classroom time. “Teaching how to use technology is not the same thing as using technology to teach everything else,” said Sara Sullivan, a parent who spoke at the meeting.
The dispute in Lower Merion Township centers on the question of whether technology has become so intertwined with assignments that opting out is not feasible. Several parents described situations they said showed the mismatch between the educational promise of edtech and the reality of use, including concerns about games and video content. Subashini Subramanian said her second-grade daughter’s math software, DreamBox, incentivizes rushing through levels for points, and she said her child told her that methodical thinking slowed her down—“If I go through all the steps, it’s slowing me down. I have to click, click, click.”
Other parents said they had tried removing phones or televisions at home, only to find off-task viewing continued through school-provided devices. Adam Washington said his son struggles with screen addiction, and he sometimes takes away devices—only to see him watching YouTube on the school laptop instead. “The screen is killing him. It is killing me, and him, together with our relationship,” Washington said.
During public comments, Seth Ruderman argued that opting out does not solve the underlying challenge. “Opting out is not a solution. It’s avoiding the hard work of finding a solution,” Ruderman said, and the remarks echoed a theme that some families see technology restrictions as needing better classroom structures and guardrails rather than exemptions.
Board members said they were considering changes to technology policies but said opt-outs were not among the options. “There is not an option for us to not have technology in schools,” Anna Shurak said. The board’s discussion, according to the reporting, was focused on updates to district technology policies, including repealing a policy that allows opt outs.
The push for change in Lower Merion Township is part of a broader national debate over screen time limits and classroom device use. The reporting said at least 14 states have proposed laws to limit screen time in schools, with Alabama, Tennessee, Utah and Iowa passing legislation. Other district actions described in the report included Los Angeles’ plan to ban screens until second grade, require daily caps for screen time per grade, ban YouTube, and require an audit of education technology contracts; and Vermont’s proposed legislation that would allow not only parents but also teachers to decline classroom tech use.
In Lower Merion, the district said it is taking community concerns seriously and has already made changes. Superintendent Frank Ranelli wrote in a letter to parents that the district has “wonderful teachers who have continuously prioritized human interaction and relationships,” and he declined to comment to the AP for the story. The district said it is considering possible additional changes, including stronger cellphone restrictions, not allowing the youngest students to take devices home, and installing software to monitor students while they are in class, while also acknowledging that surveillance software can raise student privacy risks. The report noted that in 2010 the district paid $610,000 to settle lawsuits by two students who alleged the district spied on them via the webcam on school-issued laptops.
As the debate played out, students also raised concerns about both technology and countermeasures. Mia Tatar, 16, told board members she worried that strict filtering—introduced in response to the anti-tech backlash—can block students during research for class. She said internet filters have been so strict that she was blocked while researching appropriate topics such as breast cancer, and said the core problem is whether students learn to regulate their own screen use. “It doesn’t teach kids how to hold themselves accountable and how to be responsible for regulating their own screen time once they’re in the world,” Tatar said in an interview.
Her classmate Elliot Campbell, 15, said he supported strict limits on screen use in the youngest grades while arguing students should get more freedom as they get older. “If we lose our laptops or if we lose the partial freedom we have on them, it’s not going to prepare us for college,” Campbell told board members at the hearing. Another student, Joaquin Imaizumi, took a different view, saying it is “completely unfair” to ask children to regulate device use when adults also find such tools addictive. “This isn’t about learning to constrain yourself,” Imaizumi said in an interview, warning that devices make it far too tempting to access AI tools like ChatGPT and that he has seen what he described as an erosion of classmates’ ability to think for themselves—“I’ve seen the atrophy of my peers’ thinking, which is existentially concerning.”
The reporting also described how early AI-related assistance can shape student expectations. A second-grader named Lillian Keshet told the board meeting that Google Docs will offer “suggestions” about what to write in class, and she said, “I’m a pretty good writer by myself,” adding, “I don’t need your suggestions, Google!”