BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) – A Bowling Green parent posted an open letter on social media Monday night calling attention to the Bowling Green Independent School District and pointing to what he says is a concerning problem with phone usage.
Brian Govatos, a parent of three children enrolled in the district, posted the letter on Facebook addressing district leaders and expressing concerns that the current “phones must be off” policy isn’t being followed or enforced enough, leading to negative impacts.
Govatos, a Microsoft master trainer, said he understands how addictive smartphones can be, especially for kids.
“I’m coming from a position of being a technology trainer and an educator is my profession. And so I’ve seen the impact of these addictive devices in the pockets of kids during classroom time. And so I just felt like a lot of parents truly don’t don’t know just how casino level addicting these things can be for their kids while they’re trying to learn bio 101,” Govatos said.
Discovery prompts action
What inspired Govatos to confront the issue was what he discovered after he took off the parental controls on his 14-year-old daughter’s phone.
“I even incriminated my own child. My child is a straight A student, honors, AP classes kid. She came to me a couple weeks ago and said, I need to get access to YouTube on my phone because of some school thing. Within one week, I go to my parental controls app and I see that she has between the hours of 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. on a school day, over one week during those hours, she’s racked up over 3,500 YouTube Shorts views,” Govatos said.
In his post, Govatos cited multiple school districts that created solutions for children to stay off the phone, including Jefferson County in Kentucky, where they enforced a bell to bell ban.
That means students put their phones in a locker for the day and retrieve them when school is over.
“I don’t want parents thinking that this is the government or the school district stepping in and taking away the $1,000 devices that you’re giving your kids. No, I’m suggesting you treat the phone like you would a Nintendo Switch, like you would a boombox from the mid-90s. Like, Sure, have your stuff, but maybe when you go to school, you put this in a pouch, in a locker, in a provided space that you just don’t have access to it maybe until lunchtime, and then you do have access to it again at the end of the day,” Govatos said.
Govatos met with district leaders and said he empathizes with them on this complicated matter. He said he hopes to see a change in the current phone usage at schools.
Superintendent of Bowling Green Independent Schools Gary Fields said, “Ultimately, as a school district, our role is to help students understand appropriate use and time to use phones and other technology, but we cannot solve all of these problems with policies and enforcement alone.”