Shannon Ritchie testifies about inappropriate games on school Chromebooks

You may begin.

Okay.

Hi, my name is Shannon Ritchie.

I'm a parent of a fourth grader in Greenpoint.

I'm also an SLT member and Hunter grad.

I'm here today to speak out against the overuse of ed tech and screens in our public schools.

I don't want to fight with the DOE.

I'm a staunch advocate for public education.

But it feels more and more that the DOE is not there to support our public school students, but is instead an opportunity for people to scoop up lucrative contracts in an effort to eventually be hired by these very same ed tech companies.

We heard the DOE today say that they instruct schools to only use screens for specific learning purposes, but that is not the reality we are seeing every day in our schools with our kids.

I live in District 14, where kids are required to use one-to-one devices for iReady screeners and for state test prep.

And I just want to quickly share a story.

Last spring, my son came home and told me his class had been playing freaky games at school on their Chromebooks.

He explained that his teacher had sent them to a website when they were finished with their state practice tests.

He used this site for days.

I checked it out myself and I was horrified.

I saw a game called School Fury, where you use various weapons to destroy classrooms.

There was a disgusting surgery simulator with graphic blood and gore content.

There were cam girl games, sexualized games.

The amount of horror, gore, violence, and just garbage on this website was shocking.

I cannot believe that my third grader had full access to this during class time for days.

I immediately emailed the school and asked how this got through the filters, and they did not know.

We cannot blame teachers for this.

I used to teach, and I assure you, there is no safe way to have 30 kids on one-to-one devices, all wearing headphones, especially knowing there are few, if any, guardrails on what they can access.

15 seconds.

Okay.

I asked for my son's internet history, and I was denied access.

But Google, however, has all of this information.

In fact, we pay them to take our kids'data.

Parents have no way of knowing what their children are doing on their Chromebooks at school, and that is unacceptable.

I have more, but I'll submit it.

Thank you.

Oh, please turn on your mic.

There we go.