Parents Demanding Tech Opt Outs Take Their Fight to Federal Court

Parents pushing back against technology in the classroom have so far directed their anger toward major corporations like Google and Curriculum Associates, the company behind the widely used i-Ready platform.

But the “techlash” took a turn last week when seven parents in a Philadelphia suburb sued their school district in federal court for not allowing families to opt their children out of using the internet.

The 8,500-student Lower Merion School District adopted a new technology policy Aug. 17 that limits the use of devices in elementary school and doesn’t assign laptops or iPads to students until they’re in fifth grade.

The policy tries to strike a balance between recognizing that “families have different perspectives on student access to technology,” while still “maximizing the educational value of technology resources.” But in June, the board repealed a longstanding policy that allowed parents to refuse internet-connected devices for their kids.

Citing research on the addictive nature of online sites and the harmful effects of social media, the parents accuse the district, Superintendent Frank Ranelli and seven board members of creating “an environment that is unhealthy, unsafe and invasive for students.” The complaint argues that the policy denies parents’ rights to make decisions about their children’s “upbringing and education” and puts kids at risk of accessing online pornography and violent videos. One child, according to the lawsuit, began “compulsively playing an online poker game on his school device.”

In a statement, the district said it “denies the allegations and will respond further through the judicial process.” But officials also noted that not all of the parents have students in the district. Of the seven families bringing the lawsuit, just three have students still enrolled. The rest have children described as “eligible to attend” this fall. One family enrolled their kids in a private school, according to the complaint.

An ‘unusual lawsuit’

The case is the latest move by the EdTech Law Center, led by a husband and wife legal team in Texas, to force districts to significantly restrict internet use. Andrew and Julie Liddell, who are working with a Philadelphia firm representing the parents, also have several active cases against ed tech vendors, including IXL, an online learning platform, and PowerSchool, a student information system. In a statement, Andrew Liddell said he believes the case “is the first of its kind.” It’s not typical, experts say, for disputes between parents and districts over tech use to end up in court.

“This is an unusual lawsuit,” said Stacy Hawthorne, board chair for the Consortium for School Networking, a professional organization. It’s difficult, she said, to bring a constitutional challenge over a school board’s policymaking authority. “Courts generally have not given individual families a veto over a district’s instructional or technology policies.”

The lawsuit comes about a week after Education Secretary Linda McMahon said during a CNN interview that parents should have the right to request something different if they think an ed tech tool, especially one using artificial intelligence, is not right for their child.

During an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash Aug. 23, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said she’s opposed to allowing students to have “recreational screen time” at school.

In response to parents’ concerns and warnings from researchers about the effects of too much screen time, several states are limiting the use of devices. Last week, New York lawmakers introduced legislation that would make paper-and-pencil tasks the predominant means of instruction in elementary classrooms.

Kelly Clancy, a Brooklyn mom of three who serves on a local community education council in the New York City Public Schools, said parents are “really excited” about the bill and that advocacy groups “are planning a major statewide push.” But she thinks most parents are more interested in seeing districts adopt strict screen time policies rather than opting out.

“Parents want to trust their kids’ schools to put learning first,” she said. “No one wants to reach the point of litigation.”

Ed tech organizations and the U.S. Department of Education have called for limiting overuse while thoroughly vetting programs to ensure they improve learning.

“Nothing should replace that one-on-one teacher interaction with students,” McMahon said during her CNN spot. “Are we looking at it as recreational screen time or are we looking at it as tutorial screen time? There is a right balance to be used in the classroom.”

Hawthorne, chair of the Consortium for School Networking, said she doesn’t expect similar lawsuits to become common, and that most disputes over screen time, privacy and AI “will continue to play out through school board deliberations, elections and state policymaking.”

But she urged districts to take parents’ concerns seriously and to explain how their use of technology supports learning and protects kids online.

‘Teacher-led education’

The debate between Lower Merion district leaders and parents flared up in the spring when, according to the complaint, device use “had grown intolerable to many parents.”

Yair Lev, the lead plaintiff, has two children at Cynwyd Elementary in the district and helped organize Pencils Over Pixels to advocate in favor of maintaining the opt-out policy. When Ranelli, the superintendent, and local school administrators began telling parents they couldn’t opt out, the conflict escalated.

Lev, a cardiologist and professor at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, sent numerous emails to board members asking them not to “eliminate parent protections.”

In a July message, he described an earlier conversation in which he said the superintendent told him that parents who object to Chromebooks and online curriculum “were welcome to leave the public school district and go to private school.”

Pointing to disruptions at previous meetings by some parents demanding to opt their children out of using devices, the district ultimately moved the final vote on the policy to Zoom and allowed no public comments. The district is also adopting a new program that allows both educators and parents to monitor device use.

In a statement shared with The 74, Lev said he has no plans to pull his kids out of the district.

“We are not willing to sacrifice the public schools and community we love,” he said. “We simply seek to preserve our right as parents to choose a teacher-led education for our children without mandatory technology requirements.”

___

This story was originally published by The 74 and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.