By Jack Delaney | jdelaney@queensledger.com
New York City has banned AI use for public school students through eighth grade, after months of deliberation by officials over how to ensure that kids are the “primary thinkers in the classroom.”
The one-year moratorium on student-facing AI tools, which was announced on September 2, also heavily limits access for high schoolers and prohibits teachers from using AI to grade assignments.
The ban will affect roughly 600,000 students in the country’s largest school district, making NYC a highly visible test case — along with Los Angeles, which instituted a similar policy last week — as institutions across the globe contend with the effects of rapidly-improving AI models on their pupils’ educational outcomes.
“Children need teachers and human connection in order to learn and grow,” said Mayor Mamdani in a speech at the Brooklyn STEAM Center, a high school in the Navy Yard. “They need to develop skills alongside their peers, build relationships with educators and wrestle with tough problems on their own.”
All upper-level students will be given two 45-minute modules each year outlining the risks and benefits of AI, and a maximum of 50,000 high schoolers will be able to participate in five pilot programs. Yet even these limited iniatives will be carefully restricted: Edia, a tool that provides step-by-step coaching for math classes, will only be available for 20 minutes per week, for example.
Some students with disabilities, multilingual learners and students participating in career readiness programs in fields like computer science may be exempted from the ban.The revamped rules also include a new screen time policy for students in second grade and below, recommending daily caps of 30 minutes for grades 3–5 and 45 minutes for grades 6–8.
Kemar Samuels, the chancellor of NYC Public Schools (NYCPS), noted that the administration will be actively monitoring the ban throughout the school year. A new “Technology in Schools” panel, composed of students, educators, parent leaders, elected officials, advocates, union representatives and ed-tech experts, will convene periodically to discuss its implementation and draft corrective changes for next year.
The city released its initial guidance in March, but quickly found itself on the backfoot after thousands of families expressed outrage at what they perceived as too much leeway for AI usage.
Pressure mounted in June, when the majority of city council members signed a letter calling on NYCPS to impose a two-year moratorium, while a parallel petition online received nearly 6,000 signatures.
In July, Samuels sent an email to school administrators asking them to pause all software purchases until an updated framework was finalized. Then came a long period of tense quiet, as parents were left without details on their schools’ AI policies until the final week before the first day of classes.
While many parents celebrated the announcement, others argued it did not go far enough.
“This new policy, while a step in the right direction, raises serious concerns,” said David Monahan of Fairplay, an early childhood education nonprofit. “The policy has too many exceptions to truly protect students from AI harms, it’s too short-term, [and] it fails to address racial bias and environmental impacts.”
Meanwhile, tech companies and their allies warned that the ban would backfire.
“AI poses real risks, and younger students need strong protections. But this policy goes too far,” said Julie Samuels, the head of Tech:NYC, in a statement. “A 14-year-old will be able to ask an AI chatbot for help the moment they leave school, but not inside a classroom with a trained teacher supervising them.
Yet union spokespeople struck a middle ground, praising some guardrails but worrying about the potential to further burden overworked instructors. Michael Mulgrew, president of the 200,000-member United Federation of Teachers, said the moratorium “makes sense” but “leaves many questions unanswered,” such as whether the city will push for more built-in safeguards from software vendors.
Speaking last week, both the mayor and chancellor affirmed that — at least in the realm of education — innovation and technology can sometimes be at cross purposes.
“The tech industry wants us to believe that AI-powered early education is not only inevitable, but necessary,” said Mamdani. “We do not see it that way.”
