Coppell Chronicle Vol. 6, No. 17
Coppell ISD Trustees Debate Screen Time • The CORE’s Locker Rooms Will be Renovated • Car Crash Takes Pizza Hut Off the Menu • Old Town Entertainment District Gets Refined
If you’re a Coppell resident and have not yet told the city whether you want a 65-gallon trash cart or a 95-gallon trash cart, what are you waiting for? The deadline to select your cart is June 30. Anyone who doesn’t indicate a preference by the end of this month will get a larger cart by default.
(See “City Will Issue (and Require) Trash Carts” in Vol. 6, No. 4.)
If you want to see the two sizes in person before making a decision, stop by the Town Center Annex at 265 Parkway Boulevard between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on June 17. That’s when Coppell’s Village Collective will host an event to help residents decide.
Coppell ISD Trustees Debate Screen Time
Coppell ISD administrators want to limit students’ use of technology, but the proposed limits aren’t limiting enough for some of the district’s trustees.
A Technology Committee composed of CISD employees, parents, and trustees met six times during the 2025-2026 school year, and they came up with these recommended limits on screen time:
Pre-K: 30 minutes per day
Kindergarten and first grade: 30-35 minutes per day
Second and third grades: 45-60 minutes per day
Fourth and fifth grades: 60-75 minutes per day
Middle school: 25-30 minutes per 50-minute class period
High school: 45-50 minutes per 90-minute class period
These recommendations were presented during the school board’s June 8 workshop. I believe Trustee Jonathan Powers brought up the idea of establishing a low-tech/no-tech elementary campus during that workshop, but I can’t be certain, because Powers was definitely sitting on the low-tech/no-tech side of the room as far as microphones were concerned.
“If something’s good for one campus, if it’s beneficial for one group of students, then it’s going to be beneficial for all of our students,” Superintendent Leanne Shivers said in response to Powers. “This truly is a lower-tech option for every single one of our students.”
Trustee Leigh Walker said the recommended limits would be a great level set for the district. During her 2025 reelection campaign, Walker talked to voters who said they called various CISD schools to ask about technology guidelines and got various responses.
“I love that there’s a centralized, consistent messaging,” Walker said. “I think that’s huge.”
However, Walker said she didn’t want to abandon the concept of a low-tech/no-tech elementary school, because that’s another topic that voters brought up.
“We have to be receptive to where we are right now and what parents may want,” Walker said. “So I do not want that to be taken off the table, truly, because I feel like it could just be another choice in our array of choices.”
Kevin Chaka, who was elected to the Board of Trustees last month, said voters also told him they wanted an option for younger kids that involved pencils and paper in lieu of styluses and tablets. These parents want their kids to hand over their assignments to a teacher rather than turn them in via Schoology.
“It’s like what Coppell looked like when I was here in the ’90s, right?” Chaka said. “That’s what they’re kind of seeking.”
Shivers said the draft graphic above was intended to brand every elementary school in Coppell ISD as a low-tech campus, but the trustees obviously didn’t take it that way. “How do we message that better, then?” Shivers asked. “How do we market that better, if that was the intent, of kind of marching in this direction? Because it didn’t come across.”
Board President Nichole Bentley said the graphic needs some context to provide perspective. “If I don’t have kids in school already, I have no idea how many instructional minutes there are in a day at elementary, middle, or high school, so I don’t know if these numbers are high or low,” she said.
Bentley also said the trustees have to stop using the term “no-tech,” because it’s not an option. “We don’t have that choice. The state doesn’t give us that choice,” Bentley said. “So for us to have a conversation about ‘no-tech,’ I think, is just kind of disingenuous to the community.”
Bentley reminded everyone that STAAR testing, which begins in the third grade, is administered online. She would not want that to be a child’s first hands-on experience with technology.
“Our kids are going out into a world with technology, whether we all like it or not,” Bentley said, “and part of our job is to equip them at the appropriate level.”
Nonetheless, Walker later said she’d like Coppell ISD to have a campus where kids in grades below third wouldn’t have access to tablets. She reiterated her fondness for the recommended limits on screen time, but Walker also said they wouldn’t help “attract the [kindergarten] parents we might be losing.”
The trustees are supposed to keep discussing the recommended limits during their July and August meetings, and I presume those sessions will also include conversations about a low-tech campus. Your correspondent will be listening and taking notes on all of the key statements — assuming everyone’s microphones are working.
A Brief Promotional Interruption
I quit my other job last week. In advance of that momentous decision, I justified it to my wife/editor/muse via this text message: “The Chronicle provides me with joy, fulfillment, and money. This place provides me with just money. I can find money elsewhere.”
That’s where you come in. This newsletter has more than 2,200 free subscribers. If just half of them became paid subscribers (which costs $5 per month or $40 per year), it would help this enterprise become more viable.
(Convincing free subscribers to become paid subscribers is not my only strategy for replacing the salary from my day job. But every dollar helps.)
The CORE’s Locker Rooms Will be Renovated
Patrons of The CORE will get to enjoy renovated locker rooms after enduring a couple of months of inconvenience.
On June 9, the Coppell City Council approved a $444,000 contract with Custard Construction Services, a firm based in Flower Mound. The project will include the demolition and replacement of finishes, fixtures, and amenities in the locker rooms and restrooms, including tile, ceilings, lighting, showers, countertops, plumbing fixtures, and ADA accessories.