On Board Online • June 29, 2026
By Gary Stern
Special Correspondent
A team of student "digital wellness ambassadors" is having lunch in the Pocantico Hills Central School District in Westchester County, explaining their activities to a visitor.
One role is to help their fellow students - and teachers - focus on the positive aspects of technology in education. The students enthusiastically talk about digital tools help them create, such as the graphic design platform Canva, the video creation platform WeVideo, the coding platform Tynker and the AI tool Snorkl.
"Snorkl gives you positive feedback and shows you how to improve," said Caroline Qian, 10. "That helps us. It's not just fun."
The students are also trained to help their peers avoid excessive screen time, which has become a national concern.
"You have to have balance in your life," said Zia Jacobs Finnegan, 12. "If you're always on TikTok, and you keep looking at things that are 15 seconds, you won't learn to pay attention."
These student ambassadors are playing an important role in an ambitious digital wellness initiative that began in 2024-25. The idea is to take a community-wide approach to overcome the negative aspects of student dependence on cellphones and other screens, including how it affects their mood and focus.
Gwynna Ficeto, 11, said her mom had recently taken away her cellphone because she was using it too much. But Gwynna was okay with losing it because of what she gained.
"I'm definitely noticing more," she said. "Instead of being on the phone on the bus, I'm talking to my friends and seeing the trees."
Woods are all around the district's single school building, located just east of the Hudson River in Westchester County. The setting is a hamlet of rolling hills that is closely tied to the Rockefeller family, which once owned nearly 3,000 acres of land here. With about 330 students from junior pre-K to grade 8, Pocantico Hills feeds three other school districts that have high schools: Briarcliff, Pleasantville and Sleepy Hollow.
The district's digital wellness initiative is led by Alana Winnick, the district's educational technology director. The School Administrators Association of New York State named her its statewide Leader in Digital Education for 2025. And CoSN, a national association of K-12 ed tech leaders, gave Winnick a prestigious award in 2025 called the Withrow Chief Technology Officer Award.
Winnick is the author of The Generative Age, a book about AI's integration into education, and hosts a podcast with the same title. Her forthcoming book is titled The Digital Wellness Age.
Lately, Winnick is focused on building students' time management skills with respect to screen time at home as well as school. Part of the strategy is encouraging both parents and teachers to become better role models.
"This needs to be a cultural shift," Winnick said. "It's not only about students' screen time. It's about students, families and staff building healthier, more intentional technology habits together. We all have to learn to regulate our own use of technology - put down phones and be present - if we want kids to do it. It starts with all of us."
Pocantico Hills began having students put their cellphones in lockers during the 2024-25 school year, one year before New York's statewide bell-to-bell ban on cellphones went into effect.
But educators in Pocantico Hills felt that wasn't enough. They wanted to build a community-wide consciousness about the role of technology in students' lives, leading to the digital wellness initiative. A Digital Wellness Committee was formed in 2025-26 to guide the effort.
Winnick collaborated with Christine Perricelli, the district's student support services director, to focus on understanding what parents, teachers and students need to know to balance technology and promote digital wellness.
"Technology is a great equalizer for struggling students, but it should not be used as a substitute for quality face-to-face instruction," Perricelli said. "It is important that students still continue to practice perseverance and navigate the social norms with teachers and peers."
A turning point in Pocantico Hills came last fall when the Digital Wellness Committee had staff look at data showing how much free time they spent on their cellphones. Many staffers did not like what they saw. They later did the same exercise with students and parents, who also were demoralized by how much time they spent glued to screens.
"Parents feel like we've lost control of the situation," said Mia Kargen, a junior pre-K teacher in the district and the parent of seventh- and ninth-graders. "Kids are on social media all the time, seeing constant images of perfection and everything else. It's hard to know what to do about it."
Kids should do at least one hour of exercise a day, be off screens for at least an hour before bed and get adequate sleep, Winnick said.
"We need to have these conversations with our youngest learners," Winnick said. "We tell students that it's ok to be bored. Your best ideas come when you're bored and letting your mind wander. When you're using technology, be active creators, not passive consumers doing click, click, click."
The district has involved parents from the start, holding coffee talks to gauge their concerns and questions. Winnick is also offering "device clinics" for parents to show them how to set up parental controls, time limits and more on their kids' technology.
Sara Sonne, an elementary guidance counselor and a member of the Digital Wellness Committee, said that students must be made aware of how digital overkill can hurt them.
"It has to start young; by the time they're 8, they're addicted," she said. "I see kids who have bad posture from looking down at their phones. Some kindergartners don't know how to speak to people. Kids don't know how to kill time without their phones."
Sonne and Marina Pisto, a third-grade teacher also on the Digital Wellness Committee, lamented that some students consider things they've done online - like making a "friend" in an online game - to be important experiences in their young lives.
Students ought to have better examples of meaningful childhood experiences, Pisto said. "Sometimes that means just playing," she said.
Winnick stressed that the district is not anti-tech. Educators want students to become adept at using technology that gives them access to information and tools that enhance their learning. At the same time, both students and adults need to grasp that wasteful screen time deprives them of meaningful connections to people and the world around them.
"Digital wellness is not about using less technology, it's about using technology with purpose," Pocantico Hills Superintendent Rich Calkins said.
On the day that On Board visited the district, the student ambassadors were preparing to solicit classmates' ideas for activities during designated "screen breaks."
In their school's lunchroom, Gwynna Ficeto and other student ambassadors recounted some of their recent activities, including:
- Showing teachers how to use virtual reality headsets.
- Speaking at a meeting of the Pocantico Hills school board.
- Giving a presentation at a superintendent's conference day.
But their biggest role is interacting with their peers and encouraging them to have a healthy relationship with technology - using it with purpose and taking breaks. Ficeto said she feels that the program has empowered her and other students to help make their school better.
"I like having - what's that word? - agency!" she said.