At my kids school (5th - 12th) the middle schoolers cannot have their phones or other electronic devices on them during the day. If they are seen with the device it is confiscated.

High school students are allowed to use their devices during lunch. Some domains are blocked (eg no Netflix, no Snapchat, no Instagram, yes to YouTube - bc some tutorials are recommended for sciences).

If a high schooler is caught using a device during class it is confiscated.

I find this very disconcerting, after the psychological emphasis of Nicole Lovell having an online life that overtook personal relationships. For a school to encourage kids to self isolate, (which they do by allowing access to electronic devices) during the day is unbelieveable. A large part of school is peer socialization.

I know when I was in middle school if I had a way to escape the awkwardness of peer socialization I would have certainly taken that route.

They want the kids to be zombied out online so they don't have to deal with them. They don't want to give finals because they don't want to deal with them. The school system is getting out of control, it's time for parents to push back.

Nanny here. Three separate sets of charges have been required (?!) to bring devices to school, middle and high school were required every day, elementary was intermittent. I'm not sure what the policy was for middle and high school during lunch, but elementary students had to leave them in their desks or lockers until they were needed for class.

Our (private) middle school does not allow kids to use phones during the school day. They are off in the locker during school hours. Love it.

My school allows the same and I really oppose the policy

I'm not the OP, but my school allows students to use their devices (and play games/watch videos/etc.) during the lunch block, as long as the student is following the acceptable use policy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DD middle school allows kids to watch streaming movies through personal Netflix/Amazon prime accounts during lunch.

I'd be interested in hearing parents thoughts on this.

I find this hard to believe and think you are trolling. Not so much because of the permissive nature of it but rather from an IT resources perspective. DD complains the school wifi is ridiculously slow (although I guess movie-watching might explain this).

Watching movies on a data plan would similarly drive most parents around a bend when they got the bill.

So, shorter: Either you made this up your kid is pulling your leg.

If he's using the school wifi, then he's not using any data off the phone plan.

See the first thing I said: I find it doubtful a school wifi would suppport multiple kids streaming videos.

I'm not the OP, and she's provided enough details that I can say confidently that we aren't at the same school, but at the school where I teach it's not uncommon for teachers to give assignments that involve some video watching, and for each kid to watch on their own device. You might have one classroom where kids are watching video of a science experiment that's too dangerous or costly to perform in the classroom, and another classroom where kids are doing a webquest, and looking through videos as well as text based sources for information on historical figures, and a third classroom where there's a study hall and several kids are watching Khan academy videos to reinforce their math learning. The school wifi supports it just fine.

OP here.
11:36, I'm not sure what I would gain from trolling or me making this up. My question was simply because the school admin tells me that kids are allowed to watch during breaks which I find crazy but wanted to hear from parents who think its OK.

For 11:55. My DD phone doesn't have a data plan, nor does she watch TV during lunch. I've heard about kids watching Nextflix during lunch (and even sneaking during class which is a different issue) and witnessed it myself one day when I stopped in for a meeting. I wrote the admin to get clarity on their policy. The response is below:

"Netflix is not blocked because it requires a paid account with a credit card to access -- therefore, parents of our our middle-schoolers have oversight over those students who use their parents' account. Many of our students watch favorite shows, etc. (both out of school and at free times) on Netflix using their parents' accounts."

From the responses on this thread it sounds like I'm not alone in finding this policy absurd.