So much has transpired over the past week and a half! If you are interested in learning about the early stages of collaboration between Screen Sense Oak Park and District 97, please visit our website ScreenSenseOakPark.org and submit a contact form.
If you share our concerns and have signed this petition, we urge you to take additional action:
1. Reach out to the district to submit emails to board members and administrators.
2. Talk to your principal – a conversation at the building level can be powerful.
3. Consider speaking at a school board meeting, held the second and fourth Tuesday of each month at 7pm at 260 Madison.
4. Share this petition with your network of D97 parents!
Here are our current priorities as SSOP works with the district. Before school year 2026-2027, D97 will create and enforce clear guidelines on appropriate screen time—both for District devices and personal devices—ensuring that these standards are informed by educational experts and parental input.
- Keep district devices at school overnight and on weekends, except for families that opt in to having them sent home; give analog homework through middle school
- Refrain from giving students district devices until at least third grade
- Create a bell-to-bell ban on personal device access for all D97 schools
- Ban device use during periods of free time, indoor recess, brain breaks and PBIS rewards
- Eliminate access to non-educational and pseudo-educational apps (ex: GimKit and Blooket and CoolMathGames)
- Restrict access to online content (ex: YouTube, Reddit, Minecraft, any and all social media)
- Publish teacher guidelines for intentional screen use and appropriate use of analog learning as the default, to minimize distraction and student screen addiction
- Send parents weekly reports on screen time including information on their child’s screen use, as well as classroom and grade level data
Here are some additional steps we propose:
Listen and support teachers in this process: Teachers have expressed several needs, from getting better support to be more tech savvy than their students and effectively manage screen addiction/misuse in their classrooms, to providing better training using existing digital learning platforms before rolling out new ones. They also have the need for physical classroom items: cabinets to stow screens out of sight, and to charge all devices at school (many devices are sent home because classrooms/grade levels do not have charging capabilities at school). They need policies that support keeping personal electronic devices stowed away from bell to bell, since parents are sending children with smartphones and unlocked smartwatches even in elementary school.
Implement parent training workshops: Host sessions for parents to better understand and effectively manage educational technology, enabling them to support their children's learning more effectively. Local PTOs have been looking into this and taking action, including a presentation at Whittier Elementary’s April 2026 PTO meeting. Screen Sense Oak Park is exploring ways to share helpful information with teachers and families while we await more support from the district.
Ongoing data collection: Are weekly screen reports sent to principals being appraised or monitored? Conduct a district-wide evaluation to assess the current usage of screen time in classrooms across grades, focusing on identifying potential misuse and its impacts on student learning and engagement. Screen Sense Oak Park is already exploring data collection to better quantify and outline what is currently happening on district devices during school hours. How much time on average per day are students spending on each core subject on devices vs. non-device learning? Does this vary from class to class? Are there grade-level norms? How are tech boundaries created and enforced from an IT standpoint? Why are students able to go “incognito” when on Safari? What criteria define a website as “educational” vs. being blocked?)
We know why iPads were handed out even to kindergarteners in 2020 during the global pandemic. But why are we still doing this six years later in spite of what science is showing us? By uniting as a community, we can prioritize our children's healthy development and ensure that technological advancements in education serve them positively. Join us in urging the Oak Park District 97 school board to take meaningful steps towards achieving a balanced approach to screen time in education.
Thank you for your support!