By Linda Conner Lambeck

WESTPORT–Cell phones may be gone from the hands of students in Westport Public Schools, but technology remains. 

Lots of it.

Students use computers and other devices to do research, access textbooks and assignments, take tests, do homework and get grades. There are Smartboards, Chromebooks and wireless access everywhere–soon even on the Staples High School football field.

There is so much technology that some board members want to know how much is too much.

What is healthy?

“I’m curious, in general, what do we as a district think is a healthy and balanced use (of technology),” Board Vice Chair Dorie Hordon asked during a recent Technology Update report to the board.

Board Chair Lee Goldstein is also curious.

“I feel we are touting no phones (in school) and then all homework is online, all textbooks are online,” said Goldstein.

They likened the increasing use of technology to a runaway train.

While it may be hard to pinpoint the sweet spot of a healthy balance, the district is aiming to figure out, at least, how much screen time occurs in the name of teaching and learning, both during and after school, grades K-12.

Assistant Superintendent Anna Mahon said the district does not want to use screens for gratuitous reasons, but when it advances learning.

Tailored instruction and eliminating a distraction

Increasingly, computers help teachers tailor instructions to the individual.

Schools Superintendent Thomas Scarice said the district’s phone-free initiative was less about reducing screen time and more about eliminating a classroom distraction.

An update on that ban, which went into effect in early November and which Scarice said is going well, will come to the board this spring.

Screentime audit on the way

In the meantime, the district plans to use Hanover Research, the firm that does many district climate surveys, to conduct the district’s first screentime audit.

It is unclear how many other districts have done such an audit, but one informal national survey conducted by the New York Times in October 2025 found that of 350 respondents from 40 states and Washington, D.C., 99 percent of teachers said their students were provided with computer devices to use in class. At the elementary level, teachers said 81 percent said students start using the devices by kindergarten.

Device use “ballooning”

The survey also found that while a third of students had computer devices assigned to them pre-pandemic in 2019, that number has ballooned to eight in 10 now.

According to data supplied to the Westport Board of Education when the 2025-26 operating budget was presented last January, the district of 5,200 students and 1,000 staff members use 12,100 devices such as laptops and tablets, 1,850 infrastructure devices or essential hardware components, and more than 45 software applications.

It remains unclear to local officials, however, just how much time students are asked to spend online.

Scarice said while not yet fully developed, the local screen time audit is likely to include:

• surveys of teachers and curriculum leaders to identify required or expected screen use embedded in the curriculum and instruction model,
• an analysis of curriculum and instructional material to determine where digital tools are essential, optional, redundant, and unnecessary.
• a review of device and platform usage data.
• focus groups and interviews to flesh out how technology is being used across grade levels and disciplines.

Technology must serve learning

The goal, said Scarice, is not individual monitoring but to get a system-level insight and to see if what is happening aligns with the district’s new AI Code of Ethics commitment to privacy and transparency.

Westport, Scarice added, aims to be proactive rather than wait for problems to surface.

“This work is not driven by an assumption that devices are bad or that students necessarily spend too much time on screens,” Scarice said in an email to Westport Journal. “It is driven by a belief that technology must serve learning, wellbeing, and human connection, and not dictate them.”

Whether or not Smartboard use is part of the survey remains unclear as those usually support whole-group discussions or visual modeling, Scarice said.

Online resources: more up-to-date, less expensive

Online resources can provide up-to-date information in a way that textbooks can’t but Scarice said the district is still committed to students reading actual hard copy books, writing, and holding classroom discussions.

The district still buys textbooks even though they can be more expensive than digital resources. Perhaps not as many as in the past.

Learning first

“Our strategic direction is not “digital first,” but “learning first,” said Scarice.

He hopes the screen time audit will help ensure that textbooks, print materials, and digital tools are used intentionally rather than automatically.

Elementary and middle-schoolers

During the board discussion, Hordon said she understands district officials are aiming for a healthy balance, but she is not sure elementary aged students are capable of setting boundaries unassisted by adults.

And at the middle school level, Hordon said system devices have a program called GoGuardian installed to keep students from going off-task when working on tablets in the classroom.

“If there were no Chromebooks you wouldn’t have to monitor off-task,” Hordon said.

Kids can be off-task on or off Chromebooks, Scarice responded.

He also said it would be a big change if the district shifted wholesale from online homework to strictly pen and paper.

Board Secretary Neil Phillips said it would be counter-intuitive to shift away from technology.

“We want our kids to be technologically well versed,” Phillips said. “We don’t want them to be behind.”

Students who have come before the board, Phillips added, have demonstrated they can present on their feet even as the level of technology use increases.

Beyond the audit, Natalie Carrigan, the district’s technology director, said the district has updated its Technology Plan, to include more support for students and staff, an Artificial Intelligence Literacy plan, and efforts to help teachers use AI to improve their instructional design, personalize instruction, and automate routine tasks.

It will free teachers up, Carrigan said, to do what they do best: work with students.