CAMBRIDGE, MASS. (WHDH) – The Cambridge School Committe is discussing a proposal Tuesday that would limit screen time for young students effective immediately, but the Cambridge Education Association argues changing it at this point in the school year would be difficult to pull off.
The committee is discussing a proposal to temporarily suspend all screen time use for students in Pre-K to second grade for the remainder of the school year, or until the school district finishes a review of screen time use that is currently underway and due in May.
“When screens are used as a babysitter, substituting for something teachers should be doing, there’s strong evidence that use like that leads to behavioral problems that we’ll be dealing with for years, and we should have zero tolerance for that,” said Elizabeth Hudson, a member of the Cambridge School Committee.
Hudson also said some of the young students are displaying a lack of basic skills.
“We have a four to one student to staff ratio, one of the lowest in the country, and nearly half of our students dont have basic literacy and math fluency. That’s the problem,” Hudson said.
The Cambridge Education Association said while they understand the proposal and welcome the dialogue, stopping screen use at this point in the school year would be difficult without proper planning.
“We are 100 percent behind the spirit of the motion itself, and this idea that we should be talking about limits on screen time,” said Chris Montero, President of the Cambridge Education Association. “What we dont agree with is that this motion would be a hard stop essentially, and a disruption of classrooms in April at the end of the school year, which would be difficult for educators to do well without planning and thinking it through.”
The Education Association said they think the School Committee should send the issue to a subcommittee for study, and believes it can come up with a program that could be a model for the rest of the country.
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