A hot topic we've been seeing in the Washoe County School District is how screen time and technology access may impact students academically.
Monday’s meeting is part one of what is planned to be a total of three gatherings.
The school district focused on general effects that can be caused by excessive screen time at this meeting.
Paul LaMarca, Chief Student Services Officer, told us, "We see it affecting kids’ loneliness. It's linked to depression and anxiety, to suicidal ideation, and again, I want to be clear that we're talking about general screen time and excessive screen time. We're not talking about educational technology tools."
Right now, their focus is being able to show the difference between direct negative effects and indirect effects.
Direct effects would be a child feeling more lonely and suicidal due to the lack of human connection - while indirect can be seen through the lack of free time that's available for healthier habits due to the excessive amount of time used on devices.
LaMarca also said, "When a child or a young adult, say, a 16-year-old, is on a phone for 7.5 hours a day, they're probably not doing any other physical activity during that period of time, and that's a problem."
While most of the excessive screen time kids get is at home, the school district is interested in figuring out how much of the time is added while at school.
"We will actually be doing a fair number of observations to see how much time it takes to set up, how much time it takes to take things down, how much time kids are actually on machines, and so we're going to use multiple methods to try and determine that. It will be an estimate."
They say making decisions on these types of topics requires a lot of time due to needing to gather data.
"We hope to generally review all sorts of educational technology, and I-Ready in particular, will allow this commission to provide some recommendations to the Board of Trustees, who will ultimately make any decisions about any changes."
There currently aren't any set dates for when the following meetings will take place but a the third meeting can possibly be happening early winter.
