A Calvert County school board member offered colleagues a parent’s-eye review of the district’s newest online-safety tool at the board’s October meeting: Qustodio, the app the district offers to families, now shows parents what students are doing on their school-issued laptops during the school day. The member’s own child, it turned out, had been shopping online during science class and had not been told a parent could see it.
“You can finally see what your kids are doing during the school day,” the board member said, thanking the district’s IT staff and urging other parents to try it. The member called the app “super helpful” and said the company also sends emails on topics such as how to talk with children who are pushing for social media.
The district describes the app on its Qustodio parent page as free and optional, offered through the district’s partnership with Linewize. Parents can view laptop activity logs and summaries of commonly used apps and websites, watch screen-time trends, pause internet access during homework, family time or bedtime, and add home content filtering on top of the school’s safety settings. The page, published Sept. 28, says school-hours features begin this fall. The board member described them as already available.
Signing up takes a few steps. A parent registers at qustodio.com/my-school using the email address on the child’s school record, creates an account (the first parent to register becomes the primary account holder), downloads the app and links the child’s school-issued device. The primary holder can invite a second parent or caregiver. The app is free for one personal device per student at home, and families can buy coverage for more devices directly from Qustodio.
The district also lists limits and privacy terms. The school system cannot see data on the parent side of the app, the page says, and data handling is described as aligned with federal student-privacy and child-online-safety laws (FERPA, COPPA and CIPA). Parents can ask Qustodio to delete data at any time. Students cannot delete their browsing history in the Chrome or Edge browsers on school laptops, and parents can view that history on the device even without the app.
Activity logs do not explain why a site was visited, the district cautions. A video site such as YouTube may be part of a teacher-directed lesson, so the page recommends starting with a conversation at home and then contacting the school if questions remain. For an immediate safety concern, parents should call the student’s school directly.
The tool arrives as the board weighs how students use technology more broadly. The same meeting produced word that the student board member has set a Nov. 19 virtual forum on the state’s phone policy, along with a plan to protect the high school swim season and a merger of three district plans. Parents with questions about Qustodio can reach Thomas Hill, supervisor of instructional technology and teacher induction, or Matthew Poteet, director of information technology, through the district’s technology support page.
