Take the Chromebooks out. Put the teachers back in. Get the kids learning outside.

On March 24, 2026, Duluth Public Schools announced $4.2 million in reductions for the 2026–27 school year. Staff "displacement" — the district's term for moving or eliminating positions — begins in April.

• Middle & high schools: $1,781,500 cut (5.8%)
• Elementary schools: $1,258,000 cut (4.1%)
• District operations: $1,249,000 cut (15.6%)

At the same time, the 1:1 take-home Chromebook program in middle and high school, the classroom-cart Chromebooks in elementary, the Digital Innovation department, the software licenses, and the device replacement cycles all continue as budgeted. Based on national per-pupil technology-spending benchmarks applied to ISD 709's enrollment, we estimate the district is spending roughly $3–5 million per year on this bundle. The exact figure is the subject of a pending public-records request to the district; we will publish it here when it arrives.

We understand these are hard trade-offs, and that administrators and the School Board have not taken these cuts lightly. But we think the balance between classroom staffing and educational technology deserves a fresh public conversation before the reductions take effect. Even a 25 or 30 percent reduction in edtech spending could close a substantial share of the FY27 shortfall without touching a single classroom teacher.

A 2021 study of 11,875 American children ages nine and ten found that higher screen time was associated with worse mental health, more behavioral problems, lower academic performance, and poorer sleep. A 2024 cross-sectional analysis found the same pattern for sleep quality and academic performance.

In the United States, The New York Times has reported that math and reading scores among 13-year-olds peaked in 2012 — the year before Chromebooks hit the 50-percent mark in American schools — and have been declining since.

The issue isn't only the screens. It's also the software now running on them. Edtech apps are designed to hold children's attention the way social-media platforms hold adults' — through streaks, points, badges, cartoon avatars, and confetti animations. There is a growing body of evidence that what looks like engagement in those interfaces isn't always learning.

Any parent of a neurodivergent child knows this already: a Chromebook is not a neutral object in the hands of a kid with ADHD, autism, a sensory processing disorder, or an anxiety diagnosis. The constant pull of notifications, the endless tabs, the video autoplay, the games one click away — these are not small frictions for a brain that is already working twice as hard to attend to a teacher in a classroom.

The accessibility argument is often used to defend 1:1 programs: text-to-speech for dyslexic readers, speech-to-text for students with writing difficulties, closed captions for hard-of-hearing students. Those tools matter. They belong in the IEPs and 504 plans of the students who need them. That is different, though, from putting an internet-connected laptop in front of every child in every classroom and counting it as inclusion.

According to CHADD — the national ADHD advocacy organization — roughly seventy percent of people with ADHD go on to develop depression, and researchers have repeatedly documented that neurodivergent children are more susceptible to compulsive screen use than their peers.

In 2002, Maine became the first state to issue laptops to every schoolchild. In the early 2010s, Google began pitching a low-cost alternative — a stripped-down laptop running its free cloud software. By 2017, Chromebooks made up more than half of all digital devices shipped to U.S. schools. By 2026, according to The New York Times, 88 percent of American public schools have adopted some form of 1:1 policy.

Duluth adopted the 1:1 take-home model for middle and high schoolers in that context, alongside nearly every other district in Minnesota, and rolled Chromebook carts into its elementary classrooms at the same time. Teachers and administrators made those choices in good faith with the information they had at the time. But the research on whether the 1:1 model actually helped kids learn came later — and it has not matched the original promise.

Now the reckoning is underway. On March 29, 2026, The New York Times published Natasha Singer's "Chromebook Remorse" investigation, and followed it with a major opinion piece on April 19. At least sixteen states — including Minnesota — have introduced 2026 legislation to restrict school screen time or require efficacy evidence for edtech.

Duluth is not starting from zero on outdoor education. Duluth is, quietly, one of the national centers for it. It's worth noticing that while our public school district uses Chromebooks in every elementary classroom, the university across the hillside has been training the country's outdoor educators for half a century.

The University of Minnesota Duluth's Bachelor of Applied Science in Environmental and Outdoor Education is one of the longest-standing programs of its kind in the United States. The university added a Childhood Nature Studies major in 2021, led by Prof. Julie Ernst, expressly designed to train educators in nature-based learning for young children.

Nature-based preschools and forest schools for four- and five-year-olds in this city are consistently fully enrolled, with long waiting lists. The demand for outdoor, screen-free early learning here far exceeds the supply — Duluth parents are already voting with their feet.

That demand is what drove Marshall School to open a Forest School in 2022 — a K–4 nature-based program where students spend about half the school day outside, across a 42-acre wooded campus with Brewery Creek running through it.

Parents of four- and five-year-olds in this city have been choosing this model in increasing numbers, because it works. Across 147 studies, outdoor and nature-based learning produces higher engagement, better academic outcomes, stronger social skills, and fewer symptoms in children with ADHD and other attention challenges. This is exactly the population affected most by heavy Chromebook use.

Duluth is already a national leader in getting young children outside. The opportunity in front of us is to extend that leadership up through elementary and middle school — the years when the mental health challenges facing American kids are peaking, and the years when getting them off screens and into the world around them would help most.