Pacific Collegiate School changes laptop policy after student privacy concerns

A public charter school on Santa Cruz’s Westside is revising its rules for school-provided laptop use after pushback from students.

In early January, Pacific Collegiate School (PCS) began issuing Chromebook laptops to each of the school’s 550 students, as student demand for the existing school laptop carts often exceeded supply. The new “1-to-1” policy was part of a broader effort to reduce dependence on phones in classrooms, administrators told Lookout.

Students had to sign an agreement requiring use of Chromebooks in the classroom instead of personal laptops so teachers can use monitoring software pre-installed on the school-issued computers for “effective classroom management” and “test security,” according to the policy. 

GoGuardian Teacher, a Chrome extension attached to student school accounts, allows teachers to see students’ screens in real time during class and to lock screens, as well as close or open tabs. Web filters on the laptops also block social media and other sites that are inappropriate for a learning environment. 

The school has been using the extension for almost two years, Dean Lauren Friend said. Head of School Chris Guyer said surrounding schools and other districts, such as Pajaro Valley Unified School District, had already implemented 1-to-1 policies years ago. 

For one PCS senior and her classmates, the new policy raised questions. In group chats and in hallways, students from seventh through 12th grades expressed concerns about GoGuardian’s security and the privacy of their browsing data. Others were taken aback at suddenly no longer being able to use their own laptops at school and becoming responsible for a device they didn’t own and being liable for damages, the senior told Lookout.

“Everyone disagreed, but were going to do it anyway,” said the student, who requested Lookout not publish her name due to concerns it could interfere with her college applications and because the school is small. “I was like, ‘Well, you can just say no … there’s something you can do about it.’”

The second day of the new laptops’ rollout, she created an online survey to gather feedback on the policy and sent it to every student. Within the first day, it received more than 100 responses. When the number of responses hit 200, she compiled the data into a publicly available document and sent it to administrators and members of the school’s governing board. 

Of the 218 responses to the questionnaire, nearly every one asked PCS officials to revise the policy to better balance “access to technology with student privacy, financial equity and reasonable choice,” according to a copy of results.

More than 80% of surveyed students requested a “defined opt-out or limited-use option” for the school’s new laptop policy, and 72% asked for a “written clarification of what data is collected, how long it is retained, when and how monitoring occurs.” 

Eighty-one percent of respondents said they were worried that GoGuardian monitoring would extend beyond the classroom. More than 70% felt the updated policy “shifts risk and responsibility onto students and families without sufficient alternatives.” 

“Speaking up is very hard for me, but I felt like I needed to do something,” the student surveyor said. “There was a lot of people who didn’t understand what was happening, or kind of went along with it just because they were told to.”

PCS leadership, who previously held two town halls (one for students and another for parents) as concerns emerged over the past two weeks, announced in an email to parents last Friday that they intend to revise the policy and asked for feedback. 

On Thursday, they presented new revisions to students during homeroom and to parents at a family forum that evening, as well as to Lookout. 

Under new settings, the school’s version of GoGuardian monitors device activity only when the laptops are connected to the school’s Wi-Fi networks. The settings block teachers from turning on sessions outside of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., or from Chromebooks with non-PCS IP addresses. 

Administrators also provided a list of Google apps that students can access, websites that PCS has blocked using web filters — largely social media platforms and artificial intelligence chatbots — as well as GoGuardian settings and information. 

The administrators also invited community members to report technical issues or request a specific website or app be blocked or unblocked. They created an FAQ outlining the policy. 

Guyer and Friend, the school’s lead administrators, told Lookout on Thursday that PCS is crafting a Chromebook “partial opt-out” option for students in grades 9-12. 

School leadership is drafting a personal laptop agreement to require that students who opt to use them uphold academic integrity and stay on task in class. 

The school will still assign every student a Chromebook, as teachers can stipulate that students must use Chromebooks with the preinstalled tools like GoGuardian instead of their own devices if they want a distraction-free classroom environment. Friend said teachers appear to largely approve of the draft revisions.

Students can now leave and charge the Chromebook in a designated spot in the school’s study hall, though they must notify the school in advance. 

The PCS board must review and approve the finalized revised policy in February, Guyer said. 

In an interview with Lookout, Guyer conceded that PCS could have been more “responsive than reactive” and better prioritized community input before rolling out the new policy. He and Friend agreed that they’re proud of PCS students for asking “hard questions” of adults. 

“The fact that they’re showing up to the town halls, they’re asking great questions, they’re producing feedback, and it’s meaningful and substantive, I think, is a credit to them,” Guyer said. “We’re responding in kind.”

As part of the rollout of the 1-to-1 Chromebook policy, the school purchased about 350 laptops for roughly $85,000 using state grant funding. 

The administrators said the GoGuardian technology, which came preinstalled on the laptops, was intended to provide a “more controlled environment” to ensure the authenticity of student work and offload labor from teachers having to patrol classrooms for signs of cheating. 

The school has experienced a “massive” surge in the use of generative artificial intelligence recently, Friend said. 

“Even with the best methods that teachers were using, there was still concern of students being dishonest,” Friend said, adding that kids are good at quickly closing tabs before teachers can see. 

Friend acknowledged that by allowing students to opt out, the school is adding “another layer of complexity” back onto teachers’ plates, as they will now have to handle enforcement and know which students are allowed to have private devices. She said she’s working with study hall monitors to tackle the logistical challenges that come with daily laptop check-in and checkout. 

Guyer and Friend both emphasized that they encourage educators to teach lessons without Chromebooks unless they deem the laptops’ use is absolutely necessary for a lesson.

“If a teacher never wants to see a Chromebook open in their class, and there are many, I have no issues with that whatsoever,” Guyer said. “If a teacher feels like it’s a regular part of their curriculum, then that’s OK too. It’s very much driven by teacher discretion.”

The dozen parents who came to the Thursday evening “Family Forum” to discuss the policy appeared to support the new revisions. One parent thanked the administrators for the changes, calling them “sensible” and a “good decision.” One mom called the student pushback a “cultural shift.”

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