Parent of Billings Senior High offended by sultry video played in lunchroom

Billings, Montana – Though they don’t usually watch soap operas in class, students are spending a lot more time in front of screens than they did in the past.

It was only last week that parent Nicole King’s son informed her of an apparently weekly event at Billings Senior High School.

“It’s inappropriate content to be played on a public-school television… There was steamy content, cringey content is how he initially termed it, on the televisions at lunch,” said King on Tuesday.

She pointed out that although children are exposed to a lot of things through internet, school is a place where boundaries should be in place.

“It’s not like he’s unaware of sexual content out there it’s just not appropriate to be on a school television,” King added.

Superintendent Erwin Garcia of the New Billings School District 2 says the district is currently looking into the matter. He states that they are attempting to discover how the channels were altered. Normal programming consists of Nickelodeon or CNN.

“Based on the fact that the remote controls were not handy to the students and somehow the channel was changed, gives us the indication that someone gained access to the TV through our network and be able to change the channel,” said Garcia.

According to Garcia, smart phones that are linked to the same network as TVs can allow outside influence. He asserts that he has faith that school personnel did not intentionally permit pupils to view the material.

“No adult wanted to put kids in a position where they wanted to see a romantic scene on TV. That’s not the case…. We are disconnecting the TVs until further notice until we figure out what’s going on,” added Garcia.

King expressed her satisfaction that the district is doing to stop this from happening in the future. She added that the fact that it kept happening and no one was noticing is a problem.

“It’s not an isolated incident. It’s been occurring for a while, and nobody has changed the channel or interrupted that….. I don’t really see any reason for TV programming. Kids are in front of screens enough. If they want to have good experiences, good community, good communication for kids, get them talking to each other don’t have them sit there watching TV,” said King.