The Claremore senator is developing a 2027 proposal on elementary students’ screen use and parents’ say over school technology.
OKLAHOMA CITY — After helping establish Oklahoma’s school-day cellphone restriction, Sen. Ally Seifried, R-Claremore, wants to reduce the time elementary students spend on screens at school.
Seifried said Monday she is developing legislation for the 2027 session, but has not settled on bill language or a specific screen-time limit. She also wants schools to tell parents what software their children use and why, and to give families an opportunity to opt out.
The subject spans her committee leadership roles. Seifried chairs the Senate Technology and Telecommunications Committee and serves as vice chair of the Senate Education Committee.
She and Rep. Chad Caldwell, R-Enid, held an interim study on classroom technology last fall. Seifried said she held off on a broader screen-time bill for the 2026 session while schools put the new cellphone restriction into practice and she heard from more parents. She believes the issue has gained support since then.
“I think there’s broad consensus in reducing screen time greatly in elementary school,” she said in an interview with OK Politics Today.
Finding a workable limit
Seifried said measuring student screen time would be difficult. A student might use a laptop for 15 minutes in one class and 10 minutes in another. Schools have raised questions about how to track that use, she said, while some parents have suggested shared laptop carts instead of a device assigned to each student all day.
“My challenge is putting it into legislation that affects over 500 school districts and 700,000 students across the state of Oklahoma, so it won’t be a one-size-fits-all,” she said. She wants districts to have room to carry out any new requirement in a way that works locally.
Seifried was the Senate author of legislation that made Oklahoma’s school-day cellphone restriction permanent this year. She also authored a law requiring 40 minutes of daily recess for students in full-day kindergarten through fifth grade.
Parents and classroom costs
As she considers screen-time limits, Seifried wants parents to know which programs schools use with their children and for what purpose.
“Parents don’t feel like they are in the driver’s seat,” she said, describing what she has heard about the number of software programs and platforms schools use.
Oklahoma’s Responsible Technology in Schools Act, which Seifried authored and Gov. Kevin Stitt signed this year, already requires districts to identify their AI tools and vendors in an annual disclosure to parents. It allows parents to opt their children out of student-facing AI tools. Her next effort could address classroom software beyond AI.
Seifried also wants to examine what districts spend on classroom technology and whether those purchases help students more than other uses of the money.
“Would it do a better job than, say, an additional stipend for a teacher or an additional teacher’s aide, or an additional reading specialist in that elementary school?” she asked.
Her focus is on screens students use, rather than technology that helps teachers with administrative work. “I’m not trying to go all the way back to pencil and paper all the way through,” she said. She wants teachers to have more time and freedom to teach reading and math.
By the end of the next legislative session, Seifried hopes lawmakers will have approved a significant restriction on screen time and AI use for elementary students.
