The Santa Barbara Unified School District Board of Trustees stopped short of approving a resolution Tuesday night that would have placed screen time limits on iPads.
For the past several weeks, parents have condemned Santa Barbara Unified’s handling of tech-use in the classrooms, urging the board to adopt Los Angeles Unified’s resolution limiting screen time.
Los Angeles Unified was the first major school district in the country to curb screen time on district devices. LAUSD on Tuesday passed a policy that will ban screen time for second grade and below and establishes enforceable screen time limits per grade.
Board member Sunita Beall made a motion to postpone approval of the resolution to bring back clearer language surrounding the proposal and incorporate more feedback from the Balanced Learning and Technology committee.
“I really feel like this is a curriculum change,” Beall said. “We have to be very clear about what we’re doing.”
The SBUSD resolution was born out of work done by the district’s Balanced Learning and Technology Task Force, made up of district administrators, parents and school staff. The task force has pushed for intentional use of technology, and greater attention towards security and privacy pitfalls of district devices.
“This resolution follows the model that has been presented by Los Angeles,” said Ali Bjerke, a district parent and tech professional. “Los Angeles has done an awful lot of work for us.”
What’s next
The attempt at a tech resolution follows the district’s ban on YouTube and other non-instructional Google services and a series of other over-the-summer changes, such as a new content-filter on iPads.
SBUSD’s handling of tech in the classrooms remains as one of the district’s most watched issues, especially as across the country, school districts have begun scaling back its reliance on technology.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, school districts across the country, including Santa Barbara Unified, made efforts to give each student access to a device so no student would be left behind. When in-person learning resumed, so did the curriculums built around technology.
But now, the district is looking to change.
A growing body of research on the impacts of high screen time on children, as well as recent high-profile cases such as the Meta lawsuit which found the tech giant liable for creating addicting products, have changed the sentiment around technology use in the classroom.
The first half of the SBUSD resolution cites those studies. It goes into detail about the various health risks posed especially to younger children with excessive screen use, such as increased anxiety and depression, reduced attention span and a higher risk for obesity.
“We’re encouraged and we think the resolution is a good step forward, but the proof will be in the implementation,” Bjerke said.
