Parents in Shawnee Mission want less tech in classrooms. Will district listen?

Amanda Davison and her family moved to Overland Park a few years ago largely because of the area’s reputation for excellent schools. Now, Davison will be sending her soon-to-be kindergartner to a private school.

“If it hadn’t been the case that Shawnee Mission School District over-relies on Ed Tech use, we would have sent her to our local public school,” Davison said at the school board’s meeting on Monday.

Davison spent multiple years teaching at local universities, and said she witnessed firsthand the decline in student preparedness for higher education. Davison said overreliance on technology is making it harder for students to learn.

“There’s just this wealth of evidence that something is very wrong,” she told The Star.

While she doesn’t blame the students, Davison does believe the generation of students who struggle in higher education began experiencing these problems in K-12.

Concerned her daughter could experience the same issues, Davison and her husband moved forward with private school.

“I want to send her to a school so that human beings can teach her the old-fashioned way, the way that we know works,” she said at the meeting. “We chose a school that encourages students to read books, paper books, and write by hand. This was the deciding factor for our family.”

Multiple parents in the Schools Beyond Screens Shawnee Mission chapter — the first and only chapter in Kansas — spoke at the meeting to address concerns over technological shifts in the district.

Rebecca Ferguson has two children in the Shawnee Mission School District. Like many, Ferguson was unsure of the role technology played in her kids’ everyday instruction, having grown up with a different standard in school.

After attending PTA meetings, researching and speaking with parents and teachers, she’s gained a better understanding of the impacts technology can have on young students. Alongside a few other parents, Ferguson helped found the Shawnee Mission chapter of Schools Beyond Screens, an organization that advocates for greater regulation of technology in schools.

“This is something that we can change and we need policies to look at how much screen time these kids are using,” she told The Star.

Ferguson said she does not see a point in using devices in elementary school, and wishes the district would stop going “full steam ahead” when other districts have pulled back.

“I don’t understand why the district voted to renew all of the hardware, the iPads, chromebooks, to renew all that when the Kansas Board of Education is looking at maybe getting rid of Ed Tech,” she said. “It just seems like the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, and I wish they would just hit pause.”

Ryan Van Pelt is a parent in the district. His family has made an active effort to limit screen usage in his household, and was disappointed to see devices return home with his children. Van Pelt does believe in teaching children digital skills, but doesn’t believe it should be a teaching mechanism for elementary school.

“I am concerned, however, that learning digital skills can be conflated with using all skills digitally,” Van Pelt said at the meeting.

Van Pelt said he has seen positive uses of technology, like his daughter learning to code robots. But he doesn’t think every subject requires technological use.

“The case hasn’t been presented that it actually is better for learning those elementary skills,” he said.

Van Pelt joined the Schools Beyond Screens Shawnee Mission chapter after hearing about it from another parent.

The organization sent out a survey to families to develop some goals around tech restrictions, which garnered over 100 responses.

Diana Dewey, a parent who spearheaded the survey effort, said that 91% of participants voted to block student-led access to YouTube, gaming, video streaming and social media in school-provided technology, 87% voted to require computer skill classes and 79% said they would prefer no devices to be used between preschool and the 2nd grade.

The survey also found that 40% have considered leaving the district because of its current technological policies.

District response

Superintendent Michael Schumacher commented on the district’s technological use in the Shawnee Mission Mic’d Up podcast in May, highlighting some of the steps the district has taken to alter instructional use of technology in the classroom. He does not believe there should be non-instructional use of technology.

“While we celebrate the use of technology and the fact that we’ve been able to put it in our students’ hands, now we’re kind of shifting gears on what’s the instructional model we should be using, but also not ignoring the fact that kids need these skills as well,” he said on the podcast.

Schumacher also made several statements at the June 8 board meeting, emphasizing the importance of teaching students to use technology responsibly in order to prepare them for future steps, whether that is higher education or the workplace.

At this week’sboard meeting following the public comments, the board addressed recent state legislation that requires school districts to “prohibit use of personal electronic communication devices during the school day.” Schumacher said personal phone policy and district issued technology are separate issues.

Board member Jamie Borgman said the parents made great points.

“We are so grateful for the emails, the discussions, we heard some phenomenal points tonight from physicians, professors, kind and caring parents, and so we hear you,” she said. “So how on earth are we taking all of the input, all of these committees and working to unify our district to keep kids safe, using our screens in a safe and intentional way?”

The district does have several resources available to steer the use of technology in the classroom, including frameworks and a guidebook that teachers can use. .

iPad carts have also been ordered for elementary schools to serve as docking stations for classroom technology when not in use, so the devices aren’t in front of the students more than necessary.

The Star’s Taylor O’Connor contributed reporting.

This story was originally published June 23, 2026 at 12:29 PM.