MCPS Internet Regulations

By Leo Kugel

Despite its pitfalls, time away from schools did have one key redeeming quality for many students in MCPS: free time. Not counting advisory, students were required to be in class just 14 hours per week, and extracurriculars were often limited. Days, therefore, were often unstructured, leaving plenty of time for Netflix binges and TikTok death scrolls.

Unfortunately for students, though, the scrupulous amounts of free time came to a close with the start of full-time in-person school on Aug. 30 last month.

“It was definitely an adjustment,” remarked senior Lucas Carlson. “Unfortunately I’m starting to fall behind on my FIFA Ultimate Team.”

And he’s not alone. Average screen time among teenagers was estimated to be at an all-time high in America during the months following March 2020, but those figures are expected to approach a return to normal as schools reopen for five-day weeks. And much of the remaining screen time will be heavily regulated by MCPS’s information technology office.

“The Chromebooks don’t let you go to any of the websites you want to go to,” complained sophomore Julian Minkoff after realizing his school-issued laptop automatically blocks many commonly used websites including cubefield.com, one of his favorite gaming sites. “It’s just annoying because stuff is blocked even though it’s the only computer I have to use at home.”

The issue of internet regulation on school devices is not new. In 1995, MCPS released their first version of the Regulation IGT-RA, User Responsibilities for Computer Systems Electronic Information, and Network Security. It has been updated four times since then–last in 2012–and outlines the rules and procedures for internet use among students and staff in the school system.

MCPS also relies on a set of general use guidelines–last updated in Jan. 2019–to gauge what learning resources are suitable for student use and if they need a parent permission form for each student planning on using the service. “Our job is filtering in lieu of the parents,” said Peter Cevenini, Associate Superintendent of Technology and Innovation for MCPS. When asked about the controversy surrounding blocked websites, Cevenini pointed to an online digital tools approval form, as well as his own email. If a student or teacher wants a website unblocked “they can email me or they can email the director of infrastructure and operations and we’ll look at it.”

Cevenini stood by MCPS’s goal of “block[ing] categories of websites with inappropriate content.” When asked about non-academic activity on the Chromebooks, he scoffed, “We do get requests...to unblock gaming sites and things like that, believe it or not, and there’s no way we can do that.”