Stop Mentor Schools From Blocking Student Devices Outside School Hours.
The Issue
Imagine finishing a long day of classes, sitting down at home, and realizing you are still living under total school lockdown.
That is the reality for students in Mentor, Ohio. Recently, Mentor Public Schools implemented a highly restrictive tracking and blocking software called
Linewize on all school-issued Chromebooks. While safety regulations make sense during the school day, these blanket restrictions do not turn off when the final bell rings.
By keeping these strict blocks active 24/7, the school district is overreaching into our private homes and personal lives.
Why This Policy is Overreaching and Harmful:
Invading Student Privacy: Keeping 24/7 monitoring systems active creates an environment of constant surveillance. This unnecessary tracking causes genuine emotional distress and anxiety, making students feel like they are being watched in their own bedrooms.
Financial & Technical Inequality: Many low-income students rely exclusively on school-issued Chromebooks as their only home computer. Richer students can switch to personal iPads or laptops to bypass Linewize after hours. Strict 24/7 blocking disproportionately harms students who lack the means to buy their own secondary devices.
Restricting Religious Freedom: Students are actively being blocked from watching online religious services, reading spiritual texts, and participating in faith-based communities during their personal time.
Hinderance to Holistic Growth: These blanket blocks cut off access to harmless recreational content, creative digital hobbies, and independent research tools that students rely on to unwind and learn outside of class.
Chilling Effect on Mental Health Queries: Systems like Linewize Monitor utilize advanced AI and human moderation to capture active screenshots of a student's screen and send "risk alerts" to school officials. Knowing that a late-night search about stress, depression, or identity will trigger a morning email to a guidance counselor creates a "chilling effect." Students are discouraged from seeking vital resources out of fear of surveillance.
Technological Inefficiency & Lag: Constant monitoring and heavy background filtering tools (like Man-in-the-Middle decryption agents) degrade device performance. This causes slow page-load times and frequent crashes, disrupting the very homework assignments the device was designed to facilitate.
Our Proposed Solution:
We are not asking to remove safety filters during school hours. We are asking for a balanced, respectful approach:
Limit Linewize restrictions strictly to school hours (e.g., 7:30 AM to 3:00 PM on school days).
Return digital control to parents during evenings, weekends, and school breaks, allowing families—not school algorithms—to decide what content is appropriate at home.
Overregulating digital access harms student well-being and alienates the community. Mentor students deserve the autonomy to explore, express, and educate themselves freely during their personal time.
The school board can easily dismiss one student, but they cannot ignore thousands of us. Sign this petition today to demand that Mentor Public Schools respect our privacy, our families, and our digital independence after school hours!
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The Issue
Imagine finishing a long day of classes, sitting down at home, and realizing you are still living under total school lockdown.
That is the reality for students in Mentor, Ohio. Recently, Mentor Public Schools implemented a highly restrictive tracking and blocking software called
Linewize on all school-issued Chromebooks. While safety regulations make sense during the school day, these blanket restrictions do not turn off when the final bell rings.
By keeping these strict blocks active 24/7, the school district is overreaching into our private homes and personal lives.
Why This Policy is Overreaching and Harmful:
Invading Student Privacy: Keeping 24/7 monitoring systems active creates an environment of constant surveillance. This unnecessary tracking causes genuine emotional distress and anxiety, making students feel like they are being watched in their own bedrooms.
Financial & Technical Inequality: Many low-income students rely exclusively on school-issued Chromebooks as their only home computer. Richer students can switch to personal iPads or laptops to bypass Linewize after hours. Strict 24/7 blocking disproportionately harms students who lack the means to buy their own secondary devices.
Restricting Religious Freedom: Students are actively being blocked from watching online religious services, reading spiritual texts, and participating in faith-based communities during their personal time.
Hinderance to Holistic Growth: These blanket blocks cut off access to harmless recreational content, creative digital hobbies, and independent research tools that students rely on to unwind and learn outside of class.
Chilling Effect on Mental Health Queries: Systems like Linewize Monitor utilize advanced AI and human moderation to capture active screenshots of a student's screen and send "risk alerts" to school officials. Knowing that a late-night search about stress, depression, or identity will trigger a morning email to a guidance counselor creates a "chilling effect." Students are discouraged from seeking vital resources out of fear of surveillance.
Technological Inefficiency & Lag: Constant monitoring and heavy background filtering tools (like Man-in-the-Middle decryption agents) degrade device performance. This causes slow page-load times and frequent crashes, disrupting the very homework assignments the device was designed to facilitate.
Our Proposed Solution:
We are not asking to remove safety filters during school hours. We are asking for a balanced, respectful approach:
Limit Linewize restrictions strictly to school hours (e.g., 7:30 AM to 3:00 PM on school days).
Return digital control to parents during evenings, weekends, and school breaks, allowing families—not school algorithms—to decide what content is appropriate at home.
Overregulating digital access harms student well-being and alienates the community. Mentor students deserve the autonomy to explore, express, and educate themselves freely during their personal time.
The school board can easily dismiss one student, but they cannot ignore thousands of us. Sign this petition today to demand that Mentor Public Schools respect our privacy, our families, and our digital independence after school hours!
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Petition created on September 4, 2026