This school year, K-12 students across New York are beginning their school day by turning off their cellphones due to New York’s bell-to-bell ban. For students grades 5-12 in Kingston City Schools, this began a year early, as the district started using magnetically-locked Yondr pouches to make phones inaccessible during the school day.

But for middle and high school Kingston students, when the bell rings, they open up a different type of screen – school-issued Chromebooks. Elementary students also have a Chromebook during the school day, but it remains at school while older students take theirs’ home.

Alissa Oliveto, the assistant superintendent of curriculum, instruction, assessment and data told the Kingston Wire that the district does not view Chromebooks as a replacement for pen-and-paper learning. Instead, Oliveto said, “We believe technology should serve the learning, rather than the learning serving the technology.”

“There are many times when a paper-and-pencil activity, a book, a hands-on experience, or face-to-face discussion is the most effective way for students to learn,” Oliveto said. “At the same time, there are learning experiences that can be enhanced through the use of technology.”

Oliveto said Chromebooks help prepare students for their future education, careers and community, where technology is increasingly a part of everyday life. They can provide accessibility tools for students with disabilities and allow students to access information and collaborate in real time.

Parents Kingston Wire spoke to said they were not against all use of technology, but were rather concerned about the impacts of screen addiction, distractions and what they say is a lack of transparency around the devices. They said they’re also concerned by how much the district spends on them during a time when the budget is increasingly tight.

One parent, Britta Riley, said at a school board meeting last month that she was choosing to remove her children from Kingston’s public schools and instead transfer them to a private school over these concerns.

‘This District Has Lost its Compass’

Riley introduced herself at the Sep. 23 school board meeting during the public comment portion as a parent of two children who has served on district leadership teams, senior leadership teams and spent “hundreds of hours defending this district's teachers and its programs because I believe in public education and I believe in this community.”

Despite this, Riley said she believes the district has “lost its compass” when it comes to Chromebook usage. She is concerned about screen addiction and safety, and said that she has heard the same story when speaking to other parents after her 10-year-old daughter received a Chromebook upon entering fifth grade.

“A kid disappears into their room on a school-issued laptop. The parent assumes it's homework, and it turns out to be YouTube, a game or scrolling with no end in sight,” Riley said. “Parents and teachers then become surveillance officers for a device they don't control, didn't choose and don't have the ability to see inside.”

Riley said she asked the district, “What exactly is on this Chromebook? What is the digital environment that my child is going to be in?” To which she said she never received a straight answer. Riley also said she filed a public records request in May while the district was discussing cutting staff positions due to budget woes asking what the district was spending on educational technology. Riley also never received a response.

She is not the only parent seeking answers on this. Merida Gorman, a parent of two children in the district, said she also submitted a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request on how much the district spends on “the 1:1 Chromebook program, software contracts and subscriptions, data privacy software, and more” in light of the district’s budget issues.

Gorman said that her request was acknowledged and she was given a date on when she would receive a response, but the district told her a staff absence delayed it. Gorman still has not received the requested records.

“There are documents buried on the KCSD website about their technology plan and their acceptable use policy, but nothing in them is really answering the questions that many families have,” Gorman said.

Oliveto said she recommends these parents follow up with the FOIL request officer on the status of their requests. Oliveto also told the Kingston Wire that the hardware cost for each Chromebook is approximately $400 per student with a four-year expected use. These devices are purchased through the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), which Oliveto said allows the district to “generate applicable state aid.”

Student devices are replaced on a four-year cycle to “ensure students have reliable and up-to-date devices,” Oliveto said. Students are also able to keep their Chromebooks upon graduation. Oliveto also said the district “regularly provides opportunities for parents and guardians to learn more about teaching and learning practices across the district through evening Parent Academies and other school and district events.”

Oliveto also pointed to the district’s state-approved Educational Technology Plan available on its website.

“Our goal is to provide families with clear information about why and how technology is used in our classrooms, while also communicating our commitment to an intentional and balanced approach to technology use,” Oliveto said.

The Issues Parents Have With Chromebooks

For some Kingston parents, such as one parent who wished to remain anonymous to protect her child’s privacy, the district’s incorporation of Chromebooks — and especially students having to bring them home to complete homework assignments — conflicts with how they want their kids to use technology.

One parent told Kingston Wire that she and her husband limit screen time to twice a week for half an hour “for television shows that we think either have a redeeming educational, cultural, or aesthetic value, or for a video game that also would have that kind of value.” The goal, the parent said, is to avoid screen addiction and their child developing “unhealthy relationships with technology.”

The National Library of Medicine estimates children ages 8-12 years old spend four to six hours per day on their devices, and teenagers nine hours per day. Meanwhile, that same study finds that young people with higher screen usage have increased symptoms of depression, anxiety, social isolation and attention deficit hyperactivity syndrome (ADHD).

Additionally, a Columbia University study found that 40 percent of children had a high or increasingly addictive social media use, which is associated with worse mental health and suicidal behaviors and thoughts.

The parent was told by the district that she could choose to have her child complete his schoolwork after classes and leave his Chromebook in his locker. However, this would prevent the parents from being able to keep track of his homework and answer any questions he may have. As both parents sometimes work more than 40 hours per week, monitoring their child’s Chromebook usage would be difficult, if not impossible.

“School officials have told us, ‘Well, it's about your son being responsible and knowing not to go on it if he's not supposed to,’ which I think is incredibly unfair because of its addictive nature,” she said. “My son is incredibly responsible. He's incredibly conscientious. He's incredibly honest, and it's not fair to give him this really dangerous, seductive device, and then say that the onus is on him to develop the willpower not to become addicted to it.”

Another Kingston parent, who asked to be identified as Ashleigh, said the use of Chromebooks appears to be “at the mercy of which teacher you get,” which has caused Ashleigh to struggle to understand how much screen time her children are receiving. Ashleigh said her children do have personal devices they are allowed to use during road trips, plane travel or weekends but she does not wish them to be a “Monday through Friday part of their lives.”

Ashleigh’s son, in the third grade, took a state standardized test on a Chromebook, which concerned her due to the student’s young age paired with the amount of time the state tests take.

“We have amazing teachers and they work incredibly hard. But I do find that the Chromebooks, just like any technology, is so alluring to the children and so addictive that it's easy to use as a crutch,” Ashleigh said. “I guess my biggest issue is that once they get to middle school, and the Chromebooks come home, it's this whole extra thing as a parent that you have to police and keep an eye on.”

Oliveto said teachers are not required to use Chromebooks as a routine part of classroom instruction, but there are technology-based requirements, such as the state tests for grades 3-8 being taken online. While the math curriculum is primarily paper-based, Oliveto said students have access to MyPath, “an individualized digital component designed to provide additional practice based on student needs.”

While New York banned cellphones to eliminate distractions for students, such as scrolling social media or accessing games during class time, some parents notice that the Chromebook acts as a loophole. Oliveto said teachers are able to monitor student’s screens in real time, restrict or block certain websites and close browser tabs when necessary. Network-level filtering blocks or restricts social media, games and any tools, such as virtual privacy networks (VPNs) to bypass restrictions.

Now, there is the additional concern of artificial intelligence (AI). Unauthorized use of AI is addressed in the district Code of Conduct and include consequences when AI is used “in ways that violate academic or school expectations.” Oliveto said the district also aims to not just ban technology such as AI, but instead teach students how to use it responsibly.

“At the same time, we recognize that technology alone cannot address every issue associated with AI,” Oliveto said. “Professional learning is provided to educators on responsible AI use, recognizing potential AI-generated work, and designing meaningful learning experiences that require students to demonstrate their own thinking, reasoning, and understanding.”

Ashleigh said that the tech-savvy younger generation is able to bypass many of the restrictions and safeguards the district uses to prevent students from using their Chromebooks for non-educational purposes during the school day, including having created “their own social media” with Microsoft Teams.

Having used a Chromebook starting in middle school, this reporter remembers how students worked around these restrictions. Some websites hosted video games that were specifically designed to bypass the school’s network restrictions and used downloaded apps to get on social media. When that failed, students used Google platforms to virtually pass notes to friends. Whether a student got caught or not depended on how quick you were with switching your browser tab if a teacher walked behind you.

“What is it like for a teacher to have to monitor 20 kids at once, making sure that they're staying on the relevant site?” Ashleigh said. “I would assume a lot of them would prefer not to have them in the classroom too. It seems like it would make their job harder in a lot of ways. But I can't speak for them.”

Gorman, who has begun organizing with a Kingston branch of the national organization Schools Beyond Screens, said she has noticed similar issues with her own child. Gorman said her child received links to YouTube videos via Microsoft Teams.

“I was never informed that my child would be able to access the chat feature on teams during his school day,” Gorman said. “I would not have given consent for that if I had been. My overall experience is that there is a lack of meaningful overarching policy and oversight over these devices and how the children are using them, despite what we may be told.”

According to Gorman, the “big issues” are lack of “transparency, communication, or clarity” from the district on how the devices are used, how often the children are on them, whether they are supervised, what they can access and “what independent research the district is using to assess whether the use of these devices enhances learning or not.”

Schools Beyond Screens

Schools Beyond Screens is an organization founded by parents and teachers that started in the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2025. Since then, the LA school district has decided to stop giving devices to students below second grade and set limits for older students.

Gorman said the group is not anti-technology, but “pro-student, pro-teacher, pro-transparency, and pro-evidence.”

“We support technology when it clearly improves learning, while also advocating for strong offline instruction, meaningful parent information and choice, and clear evidence that educational technology is benefiting students academically and developmentally,” Gorman said. “An initial goal we have is for the board to require from the district a public audit of the entire ed tech program in Kingston, and to make that information readily available to families.”

The anonymous parent questioned how necessary Chromebooks are, especially with the budget issues that the district is going through. The May 6 budget hearing earlier this year drew an audience of hundreds as the district had a $20.9 million gap between projected revenues and expenditures and made dozens of layoffs.

She also believes that if the school district gives students “the unwanted gift of Chromebooks,” the district should also teach them about the dangers and risks of screen addiction.

“I think computer literacy is important to be functioning members of society for future job training of the students and all of that. So this isn't a Luddite position,” she said. “It's also that the students are being graded by AI. This is something that a lot of other school districts have banished because the technology is proving to be so fraught, so rife with problems and false promises and actual harms.”

Ashleigh, meanwhile, questioned whether today’s youth need to be taught technology as they are “digitally native,” often learning it faster than adults. Instead, she said she believes young people need more of “the unplugged time, and yeah, pen-to-paper learning.”

“Kids need to learn to use tech tools, but there's a difference between teaching a child how to use technology and outsourcing teaching of reading and math and other human skills to a computer,” Riley said at the school board meeting. “Other families are going to leave, and you won't know why. I wanted to give you the gift of knowing why.”