Back Off, Elmhurst Parents Tell Silicon Valley Tech Titans

ELMHURST, IL – The fight against screens in Elmhurst's classrooms continues, with one mom saying she hid her child's.

Nearly 1,000 people have signed a month-old local online petition urging less screen time for students.

And parents have formed a local chapter of Schools Beyond Screens.

It's part of a trend resisting Silicon Valley titans. Other targets are AI and data centers.

"We have let the ed tech industry and Silicon Valley experiment with our children's minds for profit for too long," Dana Magnuson, the mother of an incoming kindergartner, told the Elmhurst School District 205 board Tuesday. "Until these products are proven safe and more effective than a human teacher, they should have no place in our children's classrooms."

She and other parents object to Elmhurst's policy of giving computers to every student, particularly younger ones.

Another parent, Jill Nicoli, agreed. Last year, she said her son at Madison Early Childhood Center did not touch his school-issued device, except during a single snow day.

"We hid it the moment we pulled it out of his backpack," Nicoli said. "I learned many other families had done the same. One mother hid it so well she couldn't find it when it was time to return it."

She also questioned some of the apps on the devices.

One is Gimkit, which is billed as a "live learning game show."

Nicoli said her children and her friends' children "fervently" asked to play Gimkit after school.

"What I found was a highly addictive, dopamine-filled app masquerading as a tool for learning," she said.

Students, Nicoli said, should rely less on typing and talk-to-text and more on paper and pencils. That would allow them to build the endurance and complex motor skills necessary for high school and adult life, she said.

She said the district had the right people and administrators to fix the problem.

At the very least, she said, the district should let parents opt out of the devices.

"We do not want our children to be test subjects for ed tech any longer," Nicoli said.

Another resident, Laurel Schrementi, who ran for the school board in 2021, said she had worked in the education technology field for more than a decade. She, too, had questions about the devices being used.

She asked the district for a list of technology vendors it uses.

Following its policy, the board did not respond to the comments.

Board member Kelly Henry, presiding in place of the absent board president, read the usual script after the public comment period ended.

"The common practice of the board is to follow up with public commenters after the board meeting as needed," she said.