An Impossible Choice: When Schools Make Families Choose Education or Safety

Most students are now required to use 1:1 internet-connected devices for school, in spite of well-documented risks. Here's what I asked of my own district.

Update 8/16/26: Shortly after The Seattle Times published this story about parents declining the tech products in Seattle Public Schools, quoting me and the letter I sent to the district last week, I received an emailed reply from the Superintendent. He thanked me for “highlighting these concerns” and says he is going to “defer to the Technology Department for my technical questions” but would like to be included on “future correspondence.” If and when I hear back from the Technology Department, I will update this post again.

Note from Emily: We are now at “nearly ubiquitous 1:1 implementation” in American schools, according to the tech-industry-friendly group COSN. They see this as a good thing. I see this as extremely concerning because it means families are forced to choose between participating in education, or their child’s safety and privacy. This is an untenable choice, and change is needed.

For the past two years my daughter has been able to successfully navigate 7th and 8th grade without the use of a district-issued, 1:1 internet-connected device. As she enters high school this fall, however, it has become apparent that because so much of the district’s curriculum, learning management resources, and homework and grade portals are only accessible digitally, we have no choice but to accept the device and the accompanying risks, or deprive our daughter of an educational experience.

I wrote the following letter to our school district leadership to ask: If children are forced to consent to the use of products that pose risks to their privacy and safety, then we ask the district to please disable, restrict, and block the most dangerous aspects of these ineffective products.

If they cannot— or will not— I would like to hear why.

Please feel free to adapt this letter in expressing concerns to your own district, especially if you have attempted to decline the 1:1 and been met with resistance or refusal.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash. This is not my daughter.

August 12, 2026

To Seattle Schools Superintendent, District Leadership, Staff, and Board Directors:

It was our intention to send a letter informing the district of our continued plan to decline the use of the district-issued internet-connected Chromebook this fall for our daughter as she enters the 9th grade. For the past two years she successfully navigated her learning experience and without a personal laptop, with the added benefit of completely eliminating the daily headaches she experienced during her 6th grade year when she did have a 1:1.

However, after meeting with the high school counselor to discuss continuing our plan for high school, it has become clear to us that for our daughter to successfully navigate a larger building with vastly more students, the occasional use of a loaner laptop (like she had in middle school) would put additional stress on her in an already stressful and new situation. We are deeply concerned about the implications of this, not just on the impact of screen-based technology on her (and other students’) learning, but because we believe that the district is forcing students to choose between their health and privacy or an education.

Though we find this position untenable, we also see that our daughter’s 9th grade experience would be negatively impacted by not having a personal 1:1 device, as district curricular materials and resources are primarily digital.

At this point, two contradictory things are clear:

1. We do not see from the district an option to provide her with an educational experience that does not require the use of an internet-connected, district-issued laptop; and

2. In order for her to use the laptop, the district is asking us to consent to all data collection, privacy risks, and usage expectations, and we do not consent to these.

Because children are forced to have a device to receive an education in Seattle Public schools, we would appreciate confirmation that the district will do the following before handing our daughter the device:

• To login to a school-issued device, students are required to sign a blanket “Student Use Agreement.” As there are many unique apps and platforms contained within the district devices, unless each privacy policy is presented to parents individually to obtain meaningful and informed consent, this “checkbox” does not suffice as legally binding consent. We want to make it clear that we do not consent, but if our daughter is to access any of the curricular materials and resources on the device, we are forced to check that box. We will check it so she can participate, but we revoke that consent here.

• We do not consent to unrestricted internet access, including YouTube, Pinterest, and any social media or gaming platform. We are open to adding her to the Internet Restricted option, but have heard that this feature is so restrictive that students cannot access required materials and is subsequently turned off, rendering this option useless. Therefore, we request that the district block and make inaccessible YouTube, Pinterest, and all social media and gaming sites on the device provided.

• We do not consent to the use of any AI-enabled products, especially GenAI, whether that is via a stand-alone app, platform, or website, or within an existing EdTech product, tool, or curricula that contains embedded GenAI components, such as Microsoft CoPilot, Canva, ChatGPT, Google products, or MagicSchoolAI. We formally request that the district disable any and all GenAI features on the device it provides and we state explicitly here that we do not consent to her use of any GenAI products.

We have reached a point in our daughter’s educational journey in Seattle Public Schools where attempting to decline the 1:1 means accepting an education that would be sufficiently different from her peers. This is not to say that the platforms and digital curricula being used are high quality– quite the contrary– but rather the experience of learning is so restricted to what is available and accessible only on an internet-connected device that to decline it is to exclude her.

We are accepting the laptop solely because we do not feel we have any choice in the matter, and even if we wanted her to have a laptop, SPS policy does not allow us to personally provide her with a device that we could control or monitor.

If the above requests are not possible, we would appreciate hearing the district’s explanations as to why not.

We look forward to your response.

Thank you,

Emily