As a growing number of districts move to restrict classroom technology, some school leaders are warning that outright bans may solve the wrong problem. Speaking at the National Association of Elementary School Principals' National School Leaders Conference in Orlando on July 14, Alana Winnick, educational technology director at New York's Pocantico Hills Community School District, urged principals to focus on digital wellness rather than prohibition.
The bans are spreading
The pushback against classroom screens is real and accelerating. Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second-largest school system, has approved a screen ban for students in early education, kindergarten, and first grade that takes effect in the 2026-27 school year, along with limits on device time for older students. Baltimore City Public Schools recently announced a policy for grades pre-K-2 that reduces screen time and treats technology "as a purposeful instructional tool rather than a primary focus," moving away from 1:1 devices for its youngest learners amid research suggesting early screen exposure can harm brain development.
Even leaders within those systems express ambivalence. Sedrick Smith, a former elementary principal in Baltimore who now leads Baltimore City College high school, told K-12 Dive he has "mixed feelings" about the pre-K-2 policy. "I think we need to make sure that even our youngest learners are being exposed to the technology that's out there," he said. "But I do think we were spending way too much time and becoming overly reliant on the technology." Smith described watching young students scream for over a month while acclimating to classrooms because they wanted an iPad instead — a sign, he said, that boundaries at home matter as much as rules at school.
The case against bans
Winnick's position is that bans remove the problem without teaching the skill. When students enter the workforce, they will have to use devices and be distracted, she said: "If we're not teaching them how to regulate themselves now, they will not be successful when they are older."
Her alternative starts with adults. Students are not the only ones with unhealthy technology habits, she noted, urging principals to dedicate professional development time to helping teachers configure their own devices for less screen time. "Start with the adults in the room," she said — a move that builds buy-in for schoolwide digital wellness initiatives and can extend to parents as well.
Her most quotable line reframes the entire debate: "Stop measuring screen time and start measuring screen purpose." Binge-watching short videos is not the same as creating them or navigating with a maps app, she argued. The questions that matter are what technology is adding, what it is replacing, and whether it is actually bolstering learning.
What the middle path looks like
Principals at the conference described practical compromises:
- Controlled 1:1 programs. Tiffany Adams, principal of Blount Elementary School in Montgomery, Alabama, keeps a 1:1 device policy, but students take devices home only on asynchronous days or for specific assignments. She holds teachers accountable for interactive, social instruction — and answers worried parents with student progress reports that show how technology individualizes learning.
- Purposeful use through training. Heather Thompson, principal of Shelby-Rising City Elementary School in Shelby, Nebraska, said 1:1 programs can be great, but only if teachers are trained to use technology purposefully rather than parking students in front of computers. "Why would we pigeonhole ourselves to only being able to use print if we have digital opportunities?" she asked.
- Public student showcases. Thompson counters skepticism with visible evidence: students film cross-curricular research presentations, integrate green screens, and share the results through QR codes posted in hallways and online. "If I'm not telling the story of the great things that we're doing in our school," she said, "then nobody else is."
The takeaway
The screen-time debate is no longer about whether devices belong in classrooms — most districts already have 1:1 programs — but about what responsible use looks like. The leaders in Orlando are betting that teaching regulation beats enforcing absence, and that "screen purpose" is a better metric than screen minutes. With LAUSD's restrictions arriving this fall, the country is about to run both experiments at once.