After our piece on screens in LAUSD schools ran, several parents reached out — some bussing their kids into Westside schools from further east and south — with basically the same message: "You're missing something."
They weren't wrong and we should have done better.
We cover what's happening at LAUSD, local schools, and around the neighborhood — so you don't have to dig for it. Join the other westside parents in the loop.
What they were saying
The Schools Beyond Screens movement, the opt-out templates, the pushback on i-Ready — that's a conversation happening mostly among parents who already have options.
Parents with iPads at home. After school coding classes. Summer camps like Planet Bravo (which runs $349+ a week). Private tutors. Weekend STEM programs in Santa Monica and Playa Vista.
For those families, pulling tech from school is a reduction. Their kids still have it at home. They're just getting a break.
For kids bussing in? School might be the only place they ever sit down at a computer. The only place they learn to type, navigate a file, use Google Docs, figure out what a browser even is.
So the question nobody in our original piece asked:
What happens to those kids when the screens go away?
The privilege problem cuts both ways
There's already research on this.
Kids from households earning under $35,000 a year use screens nearly two hours more per day than kids from families making over $100,000. That's not a parenting failure — that's what no aftercare, no sitters, and a 10 hour workday looks like for a lot of families.
Screen time is now being called an "economically inferior good" in some policy circles — the less money you have, the more of it you consume. Wealthy households buy their way out of it with camps, tutors, and activities. Everyone else fills time with what's free and available.
So when Westside parents organize to pull screens from classrooms, they're doing the opposite of what they do at home. Because they can. Their kids are covered either way.
For a lot of other kids, school is the whole thing.
Even this argument gets complicated fast.
Stanford researchers spent a decade looking at how low-income and minority students actually use school computers. The finding: they're far more likely to get the drill-and-practice version of tech — i-Ready, click through comprehension questions, automated math modules — while wealthier students get simulations, creative projects, real research tools.
When we only use edtech for basic skills with underserved students — but use it in much more meaningful ways with more privileged students — we are driving the boundaries of the digital divide even farther apart, not closing it.
So yes, the equity argument is real. But just having a Chromebook in your hands isn't the same as learning anything useful with it. What matters is what kids are actually doing on it.
Why it matters down the road
92% of jobs require digital skills. One third of workers — disproportionately Black, Hispanic, low-income — don't have them. That's not a future problem, it's already here.
For kids where school is the main on ramp to tech literacy, a blanket screen reduction without something to replace it makes that gap wider, not smaller.
No one is saying Schools Beyond Screens is wrong.
We've talked to those parents. We've seen the research on literacy and attention. We know what a glazed over kid at pickup looks like.
But the conversation has to include families who weren't in that group chat. Who didn't get the opt-out template forwarded to them. Whose kids ride 45 minutes on a bus to get to the Westside, and for whom that school is the access point — not just to education, but to the tools the job market actually runs on.
What a fairer version of this policy could look like:
Cut the passive, mindless screen time — i-Ready marathons, Youtube rabbit holes, Roblox at lunch. Most people agree on this part anyway.
Protect tech time that builds actual skills — coding, creating, producing, researching — especially in schools serving lower income students.
Don't let "reduce screens" quietly become code for pulling resources from the schools that need them most.
If the Chromebook goes away, say what replaces it. Books are great. They're also not free.
Look at who's actually in the room when these policies get written. If every parent at the table has a tutor lined up and can afford a summer full of camps, you're missing people.
The bigger picture
LAUSD voted unanimously to limit screens district-wide. For a lot of kids on the Westside, that's genuinely good news.
But "first major district in the country to limit screen time" hits differently depending on whether your kid has an iPad at home or not.
We can push for less mindless tech in schools and still make sure the kids who need real access aren't the collateral damage. Those two things aren't in conflict — unless the policy makes them that way.
The parents who reached out didn't want us to stop covering this. They just wanted us to widen the lens.
Thoughts? Reply to this email, we read everything. If you're a parent, teacher, or administrator working on equity and tech access in LAUSD, we want to hear from you.
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