By admin 
Nearly a year after school-issued laptops remained in use after surviving a challenge by a parent, a Midlands school district will ask parents how they feel about their children’s use of technology in the classroom.
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The Lexington-Richland 5 school district will work with third-party researchers, including Bridget Armstrong, a professor at the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health with expertise in screen time.
“They would create the survey, they know the tools and techniques, they’ve done like 300 surveys among public schools,” said board member Catherine Huddle, who chairs the district’s Chromebook committee.
Huddle said respondents’ information would be anonymized, and no one in the district would receive identifying information past school and grade level.
The goal of the survey, according to a presentation at Monday’s school board meeting, is to “assess parent perceptions of the benefits, concerns, and appropriate role of Chromebooks in student learning to inform future district technology guidance and policies.”
It will help inform the board as they make policies, Huddle said. The survey will not cost the district any money.
At a June 17 meeting of the Chromebook committee, potential survey questions were discussed, including finding out what parents know about Chromebooks, how it is used in classrooms or at home, what concerns they have, and if they noticed academic or behavioral changes.
A vote to begin the survey process passed at Monday’s meeting, in a 6-0 vote, with board member Kevin Scully abstaining from the vote.
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The survey was spurred by some parent’s concerns about students’ use of the school-issued devices. Last fall, a parent’s Chromebook challenge raised concerns over what one parent’s children could access online using the devices.
“Even with SafeSearch enabled, students are able to access inappropriate and developmentally unsuitable content through Google Search, Google News and Google Images, including explicit headlines cached language, and image previews,” Elizabeth Huff wrote in an email to Superintendent Akil Ross challenging the accessibility of the devices. “If the district is unable to ensure that our children are not exposed to these dangerous search results, then the only acceptable solution is to remove the devices from the possession of children.”
The S.C. Department of Education is also conducting its own survey of school districts’ policies around digital devices, which could possibly lead to statewide changes to rules around student screen time.
Schools have issued digital devices to students for completing work assignments for many years, but the use of technology expanded immensely during the pandemic, when almost all students were required to learn remotely.
Though the devices survived a narrow vote of the board, the debate spurred changes. The district’s Chromebook committee was started. The district administration announced that AI platforms other than Magic School would be restricted and parents could opt out of their children bringing Chromebooks home from school.
In May, Lexington-Richland 5 announced it would introduce iBoss, an application that allows parents to monitor how their child uses their school-issued Chromebook in real time, with the ability to switch off a device internet connection during non-school hours.
The rollout was meant to reassure parents concerned about the widespread use of internet-connected devices for lessons in a modern classroom.
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Bristow Marchant contributed reporting.