Tell SBUSD: Reign in the rampant use of screens!

A campaign from Pencils Not Pixels in Santa Barbara

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Recent supporters:
William Hawthorne about 8 hours ago Jen Newman about 22 hours ago Rocio Angeles 1 day ago

Why This Matters

A growing number of educators, parents, students, researchers, and community members across the country -- and right here in Santa Barbara! -- are urging school districts to rethink and reign in the rampant use of screens inside the classroom. Creating real change requires organizing, showing up, and making our voices impossible to ignore. WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Help us ensure that Santa Barbara Unified School District -- into which schools from Goleta and Hope District also funnel -- follows the lead of our neighbors in Los Angeles. It is there that the board of the nation's second-largest school district just recently passed a historic classroom screen use resolution. When implemented this fall, it will set hard time limits by grade level; block YouTube, gaming platforms, and other recreational apps; eliminate devices for the youngest students; require weekly screentime reports to parents; and much more.

Santa Barbara school board members are expected to soon vote on a similar resolution, also to be implemented this fall. Public consensus is growing and LAUSD has shown it can be done. The time to act is NOW on what the data and evidence make clear about the academic, emotional, and physical harms linked to excessive screen time. Our kids, and our community, need not wait any longer. Please join us in telling SBUSD’s board that our community is paying attention and demanding immediate action and ***SIGN THIS PETITION!***

 
Dear Superintendent Dr. Hilda Maldonado and members of the Santa Barbara Unified School District board,
We, the undersigned parents, teachers, students, and community members, believe that every one of our children deserves to attend schools that prioritize learning, focus, friendships, safety, and emotional well-being above all else. We recognize the massive effort undertaken a few years ago, by SBUSD staff, to shift to a digital world overnight because of a global pandemic in order to keep our students connected and learning. In that effort to adapt, however, the pendulum swung too far. It is time to bring it back to center. 
To live and grow up in America today is to be subjected to constant exposure to screens and other digital distractions. Children already spend hours each day on screens outside of school, to their physical, emotional, and behavioral detriment. And school districts everywhere, including ours, have unintentionally compounded the problem through the rampant use of expensive taxpayer-funded 1:1 device programs and ineffective EdTech platforms with little to no accountability. The online and digital products and devices that make this possible have been purposefully designed to capture the attention of undeveloped brains, hold them hostage for as long as possible, and maximize corporate profits along the way. It’s not a fair fight for our kids. It creates conflict for families at home. And it’s transformed our teachers into screen-police, unable to prioritize the kind of knowledge transfer through face-to-face social interaction and relationship building that they do best. 
SBUSD has already taken meaningful steps to limit the use of personal digital devices, such as smartphones, during school hours. How inherently confusing must it be for our students, then, to just be handed a school-issued digital device instead? From that question blooms a hundred more. How many students should be able to use their school-issued devices to watch manic YouTube clips and play games? Engage with violent and harmful content? Talk to strangers? Watch porn? Use biased and hallucinating AI chatbots to solve their math problems and write their essays? Shame themselves and bully their peers? 
We hope your answer is “zero.” And if it is -- particularly since SBUSD students have already done all of these things on their school-issued devices -- we hope you agree that the time to act is NOW.  It is time to listen to the growing body of evidence, data, and peer-reviewed research linking excessive screen time to lower academic achievement, reduced attention span, behavioral issues, anxiety, depression, self-harm, addictive behavior, vision problems and so much more. It is time to stop letting tech companies use undeveloped minds as guinea pigs as we simply stand by. To initiate a hard reset around classroom technology use is to send a powerful message -- that problem-solving and critical thinking, deep learning and creativity, and real human presence and relationships provide the building blocks of the confidence, curiosity, and resilience our kids need to not just live and grow but thrive. 
May we look to our neighbors and colleagues south for inspiration. As the nation's second-largest school district, Los Angeles Unified just passed a landmark resolution committing to implement a formal screen use policy with specific, enforceable limits and guidelines by this fall. LAUSD's leadership demonstrates that districts of any size can take meaningful action. We are asking SBUSD to follow their example and pass a similar resolution, developed by the Balanced Learning & Technology Task Force, that will lead to the adoption of a comprehensive screen use policy to include, and not be limited by, the following:

  • Commit to developing and implementing practices and policies within the general guideline of “intentional technology.” Intentional technology can be easily understood as “Less is more, later is better, relationships and skills before screens.” It prioritizes not devices but dialogue, face-to-face collaboration, and hands-on instruction and learning, returning human interaction to the default starting point. It is using technology to add unique value to a specific learning objective only after it’s been impartially proven to provide learning transfer in ways other modalities (such as paper and pen) cannot. 
  • Block all recreational, non-educational platforms on district devices. Prohibit student access to YouTube, social media, gaming platforms, and other recreational apps during the school day. While teachers may retain the ability to use appropriate video content for instruction, unsupervised student access has no place on school grounds.
  • End device use during unstructured time. Prohibit device use during passing periods, lunch, and recess for elementary and middle school students. These unstructured moments are critical for free play, reflection, and physical, social, and emotional development -- time that screens steal away.
  • Encourage paper, physical textbooks, and off-screen homework. Research consistently shows better comprehension and retention with print materials. Educators should pursue analog alternatives during class time and assign homework that doesn’t require the use of a permanent 1:1 device until at least high school. 
  • Set specific, enforceable screen time limits by grade level. Establish clear daily and weekly maximums for student screen use on district devices, with less screen use for younger students. 
  • Reduce 1:1 device programs and eliminate devices for the youngest students. Remove digital devices from early education through 2nd grade classrooms, except where required for mandated assessments, and transition to shared laptop carts and computer labs for upper elementary. If 1:1 devices are to be used by middle school students, they must be kept on campus and/or disabled off campus. 
  • Provide parents with meaningful opt-out rights and transparency. Allow families to opt out of EdTech programs individually or entirely without penalty, and ensure analog alternatives are always available. Share weekly reports on student screen activity on district devices. 
  • Evaluate all EdTech contracts for educational value and student data privacy. Require independent third-party review of EdTech products. Do not rely solely on vendor-supplied research. Ensure student data is protected and that contracts include strong and enforceable accountability mechanisms. When school-issued devices are used, they must be safe -- as in lacking features likely to cause harm to students, including but not limited to addictive design elements, inappropriate content exposure, or predatory data collection. And the products and services accessed via these devices must be effective -- as in independently verified to provide superior learning, knowledge and skill acquisition above and beyond non-digital and not-online methods.
  • Distinguish between "TechEd" and "EdTech," terms that sound similar but have very different goals. In TechEd, the focus is on helping students learn how technology works -- technology (such as coding) is the content being taught. With EdTech, by contrast, technology is the tool to teach any subject. What we’re addressing here is EdTech, of course, not TechEd. 

As educators, students, parents, and community members served by the Santa Barbara Unified School District, we have seen firsthand how screens affect our children's ability to focus, connect with their peers, and engage in meaningful learning and with the world at large. We have seen them harmed by the status quo. The science is clear. Public consensus is growing. LAUSD has shown it can be done. We urge SBUSD's board to pass the classroom screen use resolution, developed by the Balanced Learning & Technology Task Force, in order to protect the health, development, and academic success of our children without delay.

Sincerely, 
The undersigned

Recent Supporters

  • William Hawthorne

    Parent

    about 8 hours ago

  • Jen Newman

    Parent

    about 22 hours ago

  • Rocio Angeles

    Parent

    1 day ago
512 supporters have signed this campaign

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