Author and psychotherapist Thomas Kersting often asks parents for a show of hands if they think it’s a good idea for 11-year-olds to have smartphones.

Nobody ever raises a hand, Kersting said to some laughs at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Pine Bush school board. Yet those same parents buy phones for their kids, he said: In fact, 53% of all kids that age had one in 2021, rising to 83% by 14 and 97% by the age of 17. While those numbers come from Statista, a global data and business intelligence platform, the same conclusion might be reached by just watching kids wherever they congregate.

The vast number of hours that kids spend riveted to phones can stunt social skills, isolate them from family members, distract them from their own inner selves and even rewire their brains, Kersting said.

It creates “a brain that has literally grown new branches in order to adapt to the environment of cyberspace; a brain that is hyper focused on tweets, snaps, and likes,” Kersting wrote in his book, Disconnected: How to Protect Your Kids from the Harmful Effects of Device Dependency.” Those rewired brains aren’t much focused on things like classroom lectures, he wrote.

Recent studies show kids spend nine hours a day on smartphones and various other screens, he said. That can lead to hostility, tension and anxiety, when, for example, a parent tries to limit phone use and kids fear missing out on something the minute the phone is turned off. Adolescence is already a time of insecurity, and layering social media on top just multiplies the angst, Kersting said.

In an interview before his presentation to the board, Kersting said that while the problem is sometimes attributed to the pandemic, the isolation associated with the shutdown just accelerated a trend. Kids were removed from society; their rooms became their world and they focused on their phones. Kersting pointed to 2012, the year smartphones went mainstream, as the true culprit. Since then, the level of anxiety among teens has risen sharply, he said.

When the world is experienced through the phone, everybody else appears to have a better life. Self-esteem tumbles because a child constantly distracted can’t spend quiet time getting to know the self, and that is key, he said, depriving kids of figuring out where they fit. Electronic devices have caused a mental health epidemic. It began in 2012 and has skyrocketed ever since, he said.

“As parents, we think we have control. We do not,” he said. The phones are designed to control the user, not the other way around.

Parents can try to mitigate the situation. For instance, they can re-establish a dinner hour where everybody sits down together, and smartphones are banished. Kids themselves seem to understand they need a break. Kersting, who has spent days in Pine Bush classrooms, said that after his presentations, students have thanked him. Simple changes, perhaps easier said than done, can make huge differences in their lives. He tells kids to keep their phones out of their rooms at night because they lead to sleep deprivation and exhaustion. An exhausted kid can’t function. Another tip: stow the phones when doing homework. It improves concentration and makes learning easier, he said.

Kersting said in the interview that while he’s not a big fan of government intervention, he thinks it may now be warranted because the situation is critical. “We’re losing a generation,” he said.

He called Ohio’s effort to require parental permission before kids under 16 can sign on to social media sites a “good start.”

Ohio’s law is on hold for now, because the industry, citing free speech rights, has been granted a preliminary injunction against it taking effect. The law would subject such sites as TikTok and Facebook to civil penalties if they fail to comply with the regulations. According to Axios, Ohio Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted issued a statement saying that companies are “determined to go around parents to expose children to harmful content and addict them to their platforms.”

There is movement at the federal level to hold companies to account. Last week in Washington, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee zeroed in on tech bigwigs who touted their efforts to make their platforms safe for children. Senators disputed industry arguments, alleging the platforms have not screened out drug dealers, sex peddlers and other dangers like bullying, harassment and even blackmail.

At one point Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, even got Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg to apologize to families whose children have been harmed by social media. Senators also said that tech companies are shielded from civil liability by Section 230, a section of law that exempts them from liability for posts that come from third parties.

One exhaustive study from Stanford Medicine that followed 250 children for five years did not find any substantial correlation between the age at which a child got a mobile phone and “their well-being, as measured by grades, sleep habits and depression symptoms.” When the study singled out children with smartphones, the results were similar.

But a key element of the study involved parental control: The children did not have unsupervised access to the phones. Parents, the study noted, were making the decisions on the use of technology. Pine Bush parents will get a chance to hear Kersting’s complete presentation on technologies’ effect on the social, emotional and familial life of the district’s children on Thursday night at Circleville Middle School.

Fewer Students, More Money

Joseph Lenz, the assistant superintendent for business, ran through two sets of numbers that traditionally mark the opening of budget season for the Pine Bush district.

First, he gave an overview of district demographics. This year, the district has an enrollment of 4,552 students, up 14 from last year. But the district, whose enrollment has dropped by 900 students in the past 10 years, is projected to lose another 223 in the next 10. The bleeding is leveling off and kindergarten enrollment is to remain relatively stable, at just above 300, over the next decade.

Although births nationally and in New York are trending lower, Orange County’s birth rate is up almost 11 percent since 2000. But most of the increase in the area served by the Pine Bush district is in the Village of Bloomingburg. Those children, however, are likely to attend religious schools, and not enroll in district schools.

Lenz told the board that the cost of educating all those students in the 2024-25 school year would be $140.8 million if it provided the same services that cost $135.6 million this year. The figure, referred to as a “rollover budget,” does not include any changes that the board might approve for next year. The year-over-year increase would be 3.86 percent.

The two largest expenditures by far would be $62 million for salaries and $34.3 million for benefits.

Based on early estimates, state aid would increase 4.08 percent to $71.8 million from $69 million.

Given the state’s tax cap regulations, the district’s property tax levy could be as much as $63.7 million without requiring voters to approve it by a supermajority. That figure is up $2.1 million, or 3.53 percent, from the 2023-24 school year.

Board OKs Two Voting Districts

Beginning with this year’s vote on the budget and board elections in May, the district will be divided into two voting districts with one polling station each. The board took the administration’s advice and eliminated two voting districts. Residents of Crawford, Montgomery, Gardiner and Shawangunk will be in the new election district No. 1 and cast ballots at Pine Bush High School. Residents of Mount Hope, Wallkill and Mamakating now make up the new election district No. 2 and vote at Circleville Elementary School.

Good to Be Good

Superintendent Brian Dunn said the district has been returned to good standing by the State Education Department’s Office of Accountability. Three district schools did not meet minimum performance standards for at least some student subgroups. Therefore, the schools and the district itself were declared not to be in good standing. Circleville Middle School achieved standards last year, and as of Jan. 25, E.J. Russell Elementary and Crispell Middle School will be in good standing. Dunn said the upgrades “mean our academic goals are working.”