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New Berlin board reviews screen-time audit, asks for midyear follow-up and tighter YouTube controls
Summary
District staff told the school board that district-managed devices produce modest active-engagement time in school (kindergarten ~1.7 hours/week); parents reported higher out-of-school usage. Administrators said they will keep K devices at school, consider additional YouTube restrictions, develop a device policy and provide a midyear report.
District staff presented a first internal audit of student “active digital engagement” on school devices and faced multiple questions from board members about parental reports of higher home use.
Caroline Hig, a district presenter, said the team sampled a seven-week period and that “kindergarten for example averages 1.7 hours of active digital engagement per week or about 18 minutes per day.” Brandon Castoni, the district’s director of technology, told the board that the largest share of in-school device time was curriculum-aligned applications and Google Workspace tools.
The presentation and teacher survey showed classroom uses that administrators characterized as high-impact — active learning, independent skill practice, research and creation of artifacts — and lower-impact uses such as “using technology for the sake of using it.” Administrators said they are emphasizing purposeful, scaffolded use tied to learning goals.
Board members relayed strong parental concerns that in-home device use appeared much higher in some families. One board member said parents had described “two to three hours per day” of screen use at home; administrators responded that the district’s observable data were skewed toward in-school activity and that out-of-school activity appeared, in their sample, to be substantially smaller.
The district described several current and proposed actions: kindergarten iPads will remain on school carts so devices do not go home, first grade will follow next year and second grade is under consideration; a no-personal-device policy during instructional time is already in place in elementary grades and restrictions for secondary students limit use to passing time, lunch and study hall; Google safe filtering plus a product called Securely is used for web filtering; and administrators are looking at blocking YouTube in lower grades or surfacing required curricular videos in controlled embeds rather than through open YouTube links.
Board members requested additional data disaggregations — mean, standard deviation, counts of students with zero observed use and separate reporting that isolates students whose device time reflects assistive-technology or special-education needs. Several members also asked for a midyear status report rather than waiting a full year to reassess. Administrators agreed to provide a follow-up and to continue parent outreach and staff professional development on classroom device management.
The district emphasized that some students use devices extensively for necessary communication or assistive functions and that those cases should be accounted for when interpreting averages. The presenters said that district assessments and adaptive programs are used to track whether technology-supported practice is translating into measurable gains.
A midyear update and more granular reporting are expected to return to the board.
