Can schools require that students use school-provided computers?
<p>I am a parent of a four year old.  She will be starting Kindergarten in August 2023 and my school system provides Chromebooks to all students.  I do not want my kid to have their own computer when they are five.  Can the school system legally require my daughter to have a computer?</p>

<p>If the school is a private school, then definitely yes: the school can also mandate clothing and grooming standards, and so forth – attending private school is optional, and they can even require the parents to provide the computer. (Mandatory) public schools have less power, but they still have the right to require students to do things that the parents do not like. For example, a parent might not like the particular history curriculum, or the might not like the fact that the child has to study music, but that is a power granted to public school districts.</p>
<p>If the requirement were &quot;unreasonable&quot; in some sense, parental prerogative might win out over the school's rational of educational necessity. But it is no more unreasonable to require a student to learn how to use a computer that it is to require them to learn how to read a book. You might argue that reading is &quot;more necessary&quot; than developing computer skills, but the school district's curricular judgment is placed above that of a parent, so you would have to establish that giving a child access to a computer is objectively unreasonable.</p>

parental-rights