The Creative Classroom with John Spencer
Jul 1, 2026 · 0 min · 9 segments
The Los Angeles Unified School District has adopted one of the nation’s most restrictive classroom screen time policies. It will dramatically limit technology use across grade levels. Much of the…
During this upcoming school year, the LA Unified School District or Los Angeles Unified School District will be implementing one of the most restrictive classroom policies around technology.
And under the new guidelines, students face firm screen time limits, and it's based on grade level.
Beginning in the second grade, students are limited to as little as 20 minutes of screen time per day, and it will gradually increase in upper elementary to around 30 minutes a day.
In middle school, it's capped at one hour per subject per week, so roughly six hours, and that moves to a total of 10 hours per week at the high school level.
The policy does allow for some exceptions, um, that includes online assessments that are required, specialized technology courses, but it's definitely, uh, a departure from the adaptive learning programs, think i-Ready, for example, that I wrote about before and that we talked about in our last podcast episode.
The district is also moving away from the assumption that every student should take a device home.
In the elementary grades, more devices will remain at school, and families of students in third grade, um, um, and above must actively opt in if they want their child to bring a district-issued device home.
Families can also request paper-based homework, and, um, there won't be a penalty.
Beyond screen time, the policy includes stronger restrictions on how dev-- uh, district devices and networks can be used.
So certain sites like YouTube, uh, gaming platforms, entertainment streaming services, they're gonna be broadly blocked unless specifically approved for instruction, and teachers will be able to opt into that, but it's, it's going to be a process.
The district will also expand internet filtering and monitoring in a way that essentially says, "Don't expect privacy on your devices." Now, confession.
I initially had a strong reaction, strong negative reaction to this policy because I only saw the headlines and the bullet point lists online.
But then I thought, "I should actually read this whole thing from a place of curiosity." And what I found was a policy that was much more nuanced and thoughtful than what was being reported in a lot of the news sites.
So I, I wanna share what I think about the policy in terms of what it gets right, but also maybe some areas where I might change it up a little bit, improve it, makes, you know, make some modifications if it were me.
During this upcoming school year, the LA Unified School District or Los Angeles Unified School District will be implementing one of the most restrictive classroom policies around technology.
And under the new guidelines, students face firm screen time limits, and it's based on grade level.
Beginning in the second grade, students are limited to as little as 20 minutes of screen time per day, and it will gradually increase in upper elementary to around 30 minutes a day.
In middle school, it's capped at one hour per subject per week, so roughly six hours, and that moves to a total of 10 hours per week at the high school level.
The policy does allow for some exceptions, um, that includes online assessments that are required, specialized technology courses, but it's definitely, uh, a departure from the adaptive learning programs, think i-Ready, for example, that I wrote about before and that we talked about in our last podcast episode.
The district is also moving away from the assumption that every student should take a device home.
In the elementary grades, more devices will remain at school, and families of students in third grade, um, um, and above must actively opt in if they want their child to bring a district-issued device home.
Families can also request paper-based homework, and, um, there won't be a penalty.
Beyond screen time, the policy includes stronger restrictions on how dev-- uh, district devices and networks can be used.
So certain sites like YouTube, uh, gaming platforms, entertainment streaming services, they're gonna be broadly blocked unless specifically approved for instruction, and teachers will be able to opt into that, but it's, it's going to be a process.
The district will also expand internet filtering and monitoring in a way that essentially says, "Don't expect privacy on your devices." Now, confession.
I initially had a strong reaction, strong negative reaction to this policy because I only saw the headlines and the bullet point lists online.
But then I thought, "I should actually read this whole thing from a place of curiosity." And what I found was a policy that was much more nuanced and thoughtful than what was being reported in a lot of the news sites.
So I, I wanna share what I think about the policy in terms of what it gets right, but also maybe some areas where I might change it up a little bit, improve it, makes, you know, make some modifications if it were me.
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