Iredell-Statesville families report failures in tablet security that have exposed students to a violent video game and inappropriate content during school hours.
STATESVILLE, N.C. — Tablets are supposed to help kids learn, but the experiences of several families show Iredell-Statesville School District’s security filters are not always strong enough. WCNC Charlotte discovered students have used their school-issued computers to look at inappropriate pictures, play a violent video game, access books that are above their age level and send each other messages during the school day.
During Tyler’s first year in middle school, his father, Drake Smith, took on a new role. Every day, he’s using double the technology himself to keep an eye on his now home-schooled son’s tablet use.
“I mean, you do what you have to do,” Smith said. “I’m just trying to limp through to get through this school year.”
The dad wants to be clear, his son’s impulsive nature and bad decision-making are to blame.
“He is 100% at fault, and the first person I get upset at is him,” Smith said. “He knows he made poor choices.”
At the same time, Smith said the school district also played a role.
“How can you say he’s being educated if he can access games and/or inappropriate material all day long at school and when I raise questions about it, teachers say, ‘Oh, we don’t think it’s a problem,” the father added.
Tyler has ADHD. At the beginning of the school year, records show his parents secured accommodations for his disability. Despite the agreement requiring him to keep his iPad in his bookbag until his teacher told him it was needed and requiring his teacher to frequently check on him to ensure he was on task when using the iPad, Smith said Tyler started missing assignments.
“He’s out on the internet all day long playing games,” Smith said. “It appears all day long.”
The father said the problem escalated to the point where he took control of the iPad and blocked more than 200 websites.
“Instead of playing games, now he’s just emailing people back and forth,” Smith said.
Then, in the third quarter, Smith said he found dozens of revealing pictures on the iPad, downloaded during the school day. A handful of the pictures leave little to the imagination.
“Shouldn’t we be eliminating that in the school?” he asked.
Amber Ford shares similar concerns. Her second-grader, Riley, has autism and ADHD and is addicted to electronics. The mom could never have imagined he’d find a way to play a first-person shooter game at school last year.
“On his behavior report, it had said he had gotten on Call of Duty on the iPad, and I was like, ‘What?'” Ford told WCNC Charlotte. “That just completely floored me. How? He’s never played Call of Duty, and then the next question was, ‘Why can they get to it on a school iPad?'”
She’s pushing Riley’s school to limit his time on the iPad.
Ford said her middle school kids, meanwhile, email friends during the school day. She also said one of their teachers told them how to bypass a filter to have wider access on YouTube for certain assignments.
“I’m begging for things to change,” she said. “At least when they have cell phones in school, they have to be sneaky about it. Now they have an iPad right there. You’re supposed to be doing schoolwork.”
The I-SS technology policy deflects any blame in cases like these, stating “the student is ultimately responsible” and “the school system will not be held responsible for materials that the student might access.” However, in a statement to WCNC Charlotte, I-SS acknowledged the district, schools, teachers, students, and parents “each have a responsibility” to ensure safety.
“As technology is ever-changing, Iredell-Statesville Schools continues to update our filters,” the district said in a statement, declining repeated requests from WCNC Charlotte for an on-camera interview. “We want to keep our students safe online. By committing to this, we adopted a more robust internet filter, which allows us more control than the state-provided content filter; however, nothing is 100%. We are constantly monitoring and making adjustments to our software to continue to prevent inappropriate content from coming through on the district-issued device.”
The statement added, when someone alerts the technology department that something has gotten through or ways kids are getting around the filter, the district takes “every action possible to remedy the issue immediately.”
Records shared with WCNC Charlotte show that, even after ISS adjusted an iPad reading app last year to prevent students from finding inappropriate books, middle school children could still access a book considered inappropriate for that age level.
“Our students complete an annual series of modules on digital citizenship to learn how to properly use this learning tool and our parents sign an annual Acceptable and Responsible Use Policy (ARUP) and Device Use Agreement,” the district’s statement continued. “Our teachers monitor and address behaviors at school. This can be reminding students to get back on task or having intentional time to put their devices away. The administration at both the school and district levels have welcomed parents to contact them, meet with them, and collaborate on making adjustments as needed to any student.”
Both Ford and Smith said their efforts to collaborate with administrators and teachers on solutions haven’t worked.
“Honestly, I want the iPad gone,” Ford said.
Feeling dismissed, Smith took matters into his own hands and secured approval to homeschool Tyler, but he said this isn’t just about his son. Instead, he said it’s about ensuring I-SS is educating and protecting all children.
“What I constantly get told is, ‘Well, he’s not the only one,'” Smith said. “No one wants to have a two-way in-person conversation to understand what I’m dealing with. If they would have acknowledged that it was a problem and even give any little bit to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to look into this and we’re going to figure out what we can adjust and fix to prevent this from happening again, I would have felt better.”
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