Important news on DOE contracting, AI moratorium, & class size funding for next year!

 

Last week was extremely eventful, with news regarding DOE contracts, AI, and class size, so buckle in. If only one of these issues interest you, feel free to skip to that section; but all are important.

Spending on Contracts

Education budget hearings were held on Monday, and a major focus was DOE’s problematic contracting process. Speaker Menin began by asking the Chancellor why they had not received any of the 600 contracts they’d requested back in March. The DOE chief procurement officer Elisheba Lewi responded that this would “take months” because the contracts exist on “a secure system that very few people have access to.”

What? Contracts are public documents and shouldn’t be hidden in vaults as though they are top-secret information. While it can take months and sometimes years for me to access DOE contracts through Freedom of Information requests, I was gobsmacked that DOE stonewalled the City Council in this way.

The Speaker and the Ed Chair Eric Dinowitz then questioned the Chancellor about the contract he’d signed back in 2023 when he was District 3 Superintendent for $180,000 with a company that supplied temporary foreign-language teachers to schools. This contract apparently had been artificially divided into $25,000 increments to evade the DOE centralized contracting process.

This finding was first reported by Sue Edelman on her Substack, who took a look at a Special Commissioner of Investigator’s report from June 2025 that castigated the District 3 Deputy Superintendent Mariela Graham for doing the very same thing in 2024. This report recommended that Graham be fired—without the SCI noticing Samuels had done the very same thing as Superintendent the year before.

Instead of being fired, Graham was promoted to DOE’s senior executive director of strategy. When questioned about this at the hearing, Chancellor Samuels responded that whatever he did was to benefit students. After he was repeatedly pressed, Liz Vladeck, the DOE’s General Counsel, advised him not to answer any more questions, since this issue is likely now being investigated by the SCI. Vladeck also admitted that she had approved of Graham’s promotion, despite the recommendation that she be fired.

Though many media outlets have picked up on this story, including most recently the NY Times, most have failed to explain that dividing up contracts to evade the centralized DOE contracting process that supposedly requires competitive bidding (though often does not) and a more careful privacy vetting process, (which is still inadequate) this parceling out bigger contracts to $25,000 amounts is a widespread and long-standing practice at DOE. As Chair Dinowitz pointed out, $386 million in contracts were divided into $25,000 increments in 2024. In my view, the Chancellor should not be uniquely targeted in this way, but instead the entire contracting process at DOE needs radical reform, as it has led to many millions wasted on ineffective or even damaging ed tech products as well as breaches and other privacy violations.

NYC Council’s Push for an AI Moratorium

The day following the hearing on Tuesday our AI Moratorium Coalition held a rally in City Hall Park, to release a NYC Council letter to the Mayor and Chancellor, urging them to enact the call for a two year moratorium on the use of AI in the classroom. What’s impressive about this letter is that it was signed by 29 Council Members – more than half the entire body – including elected officials left, right and center. This event and the letter were widely covered by the media, including the NY Times, the Daily News, and NY1. Many thanks to CM Alexa Aviles for spearheading this effort.

Evidently the Chancellor was not overly impressed, however, because on Thursday, he told the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council that he would be “beta testing” more AI tools on NYC students next year. On Friday, he appeared as a keynote speaker on an AI conference sponsored by Google, on how “education can and will continue to adapt amidst a rapidly evolving AI landscape.” No update yet when the wretched AI guidance will be updated and released. As usual, the Mayor has been noncommittal and done his best to evade this issue when asked about it at press conferences and the like.

Thankfully, the City Council is not ignoring the problems with AI and will be holding joint hearings of the Education and Technology Committees on Student Privacy and AI on Wednesday June 24 at 1 PM. Please sign up to testify in person or remotely if you are concerned about the continued proliferation of AI tools in our schools, and their damaging impact on your children. You can also submit written testimony at the same link. If you do, please share it with us at info@studentprivacymatters.org .

Disappointing news on Class Size

On Thursday, hundreds of schools  received an impersonal mass email from the DOE saying that their application for class size reduction funding for next year was rejected. These schools were also told that they should “continue to reduce class sizes where you are able for SY2026-2027” anyway, though how this could be accomplished with no additional funding is unclear. Many of these schools had already been interviewed and were in the process of hiring additional teachers. Others had worked hard to reconfigure their buildings and classrooms in order to make space for smaller classes.

Also on Thursday, the DOE released a proposed class size “plan” which the Chancellor had promised at the budget hearing would be a detailed, multi-year plan—in contrast to the sketchy documents submitted during the Adams administration. Though the Mayor received an extension of two more years for compliance in return for a promise that he, unlike Eric Adams, was serious about delivering smaller classes to NYC children, sadly there is little evidence of a commitment to real planning and implementation in this document .

Though it is very lengthy, it is lacking in necessary detail as to which changes in policies and practices will be adopted to enable schools to lower class size to mandated levels, especially as regards the more than 600 schools which at their current enrollment do not have the space for smaller classes. Instead, it is full of repetitive, conditional and ambiguous language as well as misleading argumentation.

A typical example of this evasiveness are the 133 schools so overcrowded that the DOE admits more capital construction is needed. Not only do they refuse to name these schools or explain where new schools will be built as a result, they do not even claim that they are committed to doing so at any point in the future. Instead, they write that the “SCA will work to identify viable solutions for these schools in accordance with available funding.”

Instead of adopting any of the cost-effective, practical suggestions on how to accelerate the creation of more classroom space as proposed by the Class Size Working Group report, including aligning school enrollment policies with the smaller classes required by law, DOE seems to be counting on exempting hundreds more schools to add to the more than 120 already exempted this year. In fact, they use the word exemption 35 times in the document and admit they “hope to use the exemption process as part of the overall strategy to comply with the law.”

The only specific reform offered to facilitate school construction is this troubling proposal: “The City is currently engaging with elected officials at the State level on a proposed SEQRA reform that would carve out public school construction projects from environmental review.” The answer to providing NYC students with the smaller classes they need is not to expose them to environmental harm. More serious problems with this document are detailed in our critique here.

Public hearings on this proposed class size “plan” via Zoom will begin Thursday, June 25 for the Bronx public hearing, followed by June 29 for Manhattan, June 30 for Staten Island July 1 for Queens and Brooklyn on July 2, though anyone can speak at any of these hearings, no matter where you live or your child attends school. Sadly, these hearings are even more delayed than usual because of the lateness of the state budget. Please put these dates in your calendar anyway and plan to speak out at least one of these meetings if you care about this issue; more info here, though no registration links are available yet.

FYI, the UFT and CSA also have to sign off on this so-called “plan” before it is sent to the state for approval, so if you are a teacher or school administrator, I’d suggest you contact your union and tell them not to approve any such sketchy document unless the DOE makes major improvements in it, including more transparency and solid commitments.

Final PEP meeting of the school year

The last Panel for Educational Policy meeting of this school year will be held this Wednesday, June 17, 2026, at 6 pm at the Prospects Heights Campus (883 Classon Avenue, Brooklyn). Come to speak out if your school was unfairly rejected for class size funding, or if you feel the DOE should stop the use of AI on your child, or you think there's a crying need to reform DOE contracting, or any of the other problems of this highly dysfunctional government agency.

And thank you if you got to the end of this long message -- because I couldn't figure out what to leave out.

PTA President's letter about unacceptable class sizes in his child's public school & demanding a real class size plan from DOE

The DOE still has not provided any funding for schools to hire teachers for smaller classes next year.  Parents at many schools are distraught, especially as the only comments from the Mayor are his happiness that he can save over $500 million by extending the deadline for another two years -- by which time hundreds of thousands of students will be left out of the opportunities to learn in a small enough class to be able to thrive.  Here is a letter sent by Gilbert Lal, the PTA President of MS 104, about his daughter's plight. 

Dear CMs Epstein and Maloney: 

I am your constituent and my child attends MS104 Simon Baruch Middle School school in District 2 where I am the PTA president. I am very concerned that while the administration has received two more years to comply with the goals in the class size law, neither the Mayor nor the Chancellor has yet provided any information to show how they will lower class size to ensure all students receive smaller classes even within the extended timeframe.

My child’s classes this year were unacceptably large in 7th grade hitting the old cap sizes in all her classes. MS104 was able to reduce only the current 6th grade class this year and has a plan to reduce class sizes for the rest of the school in grades 7th and 8th next year.  At the beginning of the year we were extremely optimistic that the budget would be approved to allow the school to reduce class sizes next year. However, the Mayor has not approved the budget to allow the school to hire teachers to implement this program.  

My daughter  is extremely distraught that in her words "it is unfair that we fought for class size reduction and it is the law, yet I will never benefit from it. It is unfair that  [her younger siblings] got reduced class sizes at PS116 and that they will get lower class sizes in middle school in the coming years." She is right! It is unfair that I advocated for years to lower class sizes and she will not see the benefit of this. It is unfair that my other children have lower class sizes now in elementary school and will go to middle school only to have the class size almost double.  

All our children in NYC deserve lower class sizes.  We cannot delay this another 2 years. Middle School years are critical years for children as they go through so many changes. Lower class sizes will allow teachers to provide more individual attention to students and work with their needs. It is impossible in a class of 35 students to give one on one instruction. With District 2 implementing Wit & Wisdom for ELA and pressuring schools to add Geometry courses, it is even more important to lower class sizes so every child can get "What I Need". 

At the education budget hearings on Monday, please ask the Chancellor and the SCA whether they have an actual, realistic, and detailed multi-year plan to achieve the goals in the law and if so, will they provide it to you as soon as possible. I also urge you to hold off approving the education budget or the capital plan before you’re confident that such a plan exists and will be implemented.

Thanks so much,  

Gilberte Lal

PTA President, MS104

Statement on the NYS Comptroller’s audit of NYC’s Privacy and Security of Student Data

For immediate release: May 4, 2025

For more information: Leonie Haimson, leonie@classsizematters.org; 917-435-9329 

The audit from the State Comptroller’s office released today confirms what many NYC advocates have long known:  the privacy policies and practices of the NYC Dept. of Education are sloppy, irresponsible and show a lack of concern for keeping students’ personal information safe from breach and misuse.    This makes DOE’s insistent push to rapidly expand the use of Artificial Intelligence tools in our schools unwarranted, given how these tools represent an even greater risk to student  privacy and safety.  

Even more troubling is the DOE contemptuous response to the auditors’ findings and recommendations to improve their processes, dismissing nearly each one as unfounded.  Altogether, the audit’s findings reinforce the lack of trust felt by many in DOE’s competence and caring when it comes to protecting student privacy. 

The audit’s findings put in question the AI guidance’s assurances on DOE’s ability to keep student data safe

In the recent DOE AI guidance, they repeat over and over that student privacy is rigorously protected through a vetting  process  called ERMA (Enterprise Request Management Application).   Yet the findings in this audit show that  DOE’s privacy processes are inherently defective.   The DOE’s lack of responsiveness and willingness to improve their privacy policies provide yet more evidence  that their rush to expand the use of AI in our schools is reckless.   AI products represent a special risk to student privacy as many  data-mine personal data to improve their products, which violates the state student privacy law, Ed Law 2D, the NY State Student Privacy law passed by the legislature in 2014. 

The audit’s findings, as well as repeated data breaches of NYC student data and its illegal use for commercial purposes reveal the inadequacy of the  DOE’s privacy vetting process.  As a member of the Chancellor’s AI Working Group, I along with other members proposed additional safeguards.  These included independent privacy impact assessments, data security audits, and tests for algorithmic bias that should be required for any educational product using AI.  DOE rejected all these recommendations.   Additional problems with the recently released AI guidance, including DOE’s refusal to rigorously comply with the state privacy law,  are described in our critique here. 

The findings confirm DOE’s failure to properly control and safeguard personal student information

The auditors discovered that DOE maintains  no central records as to which vendors and other third parties have access to student personal information, and that they maintain no written policies covering data classification, risk assessment, or backup and recovery, as required by the NIST data security framework specified by Ed Law 2D.  

In their response, DOE officials claim  that this conclusion is false, and that they are “able to determine which SIS or other applications that consume student data are in use by a given school or office.”  Yet just last week, on April 28, 2026, the DOE privacy office confirmed in an email to a parent that “at this time, there is no Central list of every educational technology tool used by each school.”  

Moreover, according to Ed Law 2D, it is every parent’s right to know which vendors have access to their children’s data, and to receive a copy of the data held by those vendors  within 45 days of their request. Yet this right is chronically  violated by DOE officials, and when parents do receive data files from their vendors, the files can be empty of information. 

There are more than 700  companies and other third parties that have access to personal student data according to the DOE website, though the number of the ed tech programs used is likely greater,  as some vendors provide schools with more than one product.   The number of products collecting and processing student data has steadily increased each year, and is even now even more rapidly growing, as DOE adds  new products with AI functionality to be used in classrooms throughout the city. 

Delays in recognizing and reporting breaches 

Because DOE officials do not know which schools use which products, they are unable to ensure that when data breaches occur, they are able to inform affected families within the legally required timeline or identify which data elements may have been exposed.

The auditors reported that there were at least 141 breaches of NYC personal student data  between January 5, 2023 through February 27, 2025, and in 48% of cases, the DOE reported them to  NYSED past the legal deadline of 10 days.  In at least one case, it took over 460 days.  DOE also missed the 60 day deadline to inform parents that their children’s data had been breached in at least 11% of the time. [Note: 60 days is in itself too long; NY law requires breach notification by private businesses  and state agencies within 30 days.]

 The Illuminate breach and problems with their privacy agreement

Some privacy vendor agreements are never even posted online in violation of the law - like that of Illuminate, which exposed the data of more than a million NYC current and former students in 2022, and yet whose privacy agreement was posted online only after the breach occurred.  Even then,  the agreement hinted that the data was not always encrypted, contrary to the requirements of the law, which turned out to be the case.  

The Illuminate example also shows that  DOE does not independently investigate breaches but instead relies on the unreliable reporting of vendors concerning the number and identity of students affected. After the data of more than 800,000 current and former NYC students was breached by Illuminate between late December 2021 and early January 2022, their families were not notified by DOE until March 25, 2022.  

Even worse, in May 2024, more than two years after the breach, a  second round of notifications to families revealed that about  380,000 more students and former students also had their information exposed.  This was also seven months after Illuminate had informed DOE of the additional students involved – far exceeding the 60 day deadline in the law, according to the information on the DOE website, which states that they started looking into this matter only after being told by Illuminate that more students were affected in October 2023.  This put additional students and former students at risk of identity theft and more, and unable to promptly acquire the insurance and credit monitoring offered by the vendor for free.

The PowerSchool breach and problems with their privacy agreement

After the massive nationwide breach of the PowerSchool student information system occurred in late December 2024,  parents throughout the country and elsewhere in the state were informed of the breach in early January 2025.  Yet at that time, DOE told a reporter they were still looking into whether any NYC schools or students were affected. 

In fact, DOE refused to confirm which schools were involved even after Daily News reported on their names  on February 6, 2025, from information relayed by the State Education Department.  Only after the Daily News reported on this did parents whose children attended these schools receive emails saying DOE was still looking into this matter.  It was not until April  2025  that DOE confirmed to parents that their children’s data had been breached, long past  the 60-day deadline in the law. 

To this day, the DOE has refused to post the names of the NYC schools affected by the PowerSchool breach on the webpage that reports on data security incidents, despite guidance from the NYSED that they should do so promptly, to alert the thousands of former students whose data was also exposed and put at risk of identity theft and worse. 

As the former NYSED Chief Privacy Officer Louise de Candia wrote on Feb.3, 2025, “ There is no doubt in my mind that PowerSchool violated Education Law Section 2-d and Part 121 of the regulations which require compliance with NIST CSF as well as reasonable administrative, technical and physical safeguards to protect the security, confidentiality and integrity of PII.”

And yet  DOE continues to allow NYC schools to use as many as 16 other privacy-invasive PowerSchool products, including Naviance, which is employed in many if not most New York high schools for college guidance purposes. This is despite the fact that in 2022, it was reported that Naviance  targeted ads for colleges on its student-facing platform disguised as objective recommendations and was shown to allow colleges to discriminate by race by targeting ads only to white students.

More recently, it was announced that PowerSchool had agreed to settle a class action lawsuit  alleging that the Naviance  platform contained ad tracking technology that transmitted a wide range of student data to Google, Microsoft and a company called Heap, including their names, ID numbers, graduation years,  demographic information, photographs and survey responses, as well as  their private communications with teachers.  This would violate not only state privacy laws but also the federal wiretapping statute.   Even now, the DOE has refused to tell parents or students about the Naviance agreement or  inform them they can apply for a portion of the $17.25 million settlement. 

The fact that the Illuminate and PowerSchool breaches exposed the data of many thousands of NYC students who had long graduated or otherwise left the system also shows that the data minimization and deletion by vendors required by Ed Lawa 2D is not enforced by DOE. More background here. 

To make things worse, the PowerSchool privacy agreement still posted on the DOE website is clearly non-compliant with the law, as it says that the company will only conform to the privacy requirements in federal and state law or in their contract with DOE when it is “commercially reasonable.”

Other problems highlighted in the audit and the DOE’s official response

The Comptroller’s office also found significant weaknesses in DOE’s technical data security controls that should be corrected, including “issues with system monitoring, unsupported systems, and firewalls.” Understandably, the auditors only communicated the details of these security weaknesses to DOE in a separate confidential report.  In their response, DOE makes no commitment to address these technical problems, but instead says that they would address them separately, within the confidential report.

In its response, DOE  claims to have made “several improvements to its privacy practices and policies,” including updating the Chancellor’s Regulation A-820 to “restrict the use of “directory information.”

In fact, the recent amendment to the Chancellor’s Regulation weakened the protections for student data, by redefining  a wide and essentially unlimited range of personal student information, including but not limited to their names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, photographs, grade level, participation in activities and sports, and more, as directory data that can be shared with third parties, even when they are not providing services to schools.  Only an unreliable parent opt out  process was provided to prevent these disclosures from occurring.

Finally, the auditors also revealed that DOE officials took an inordinate time to respond to their requests; and that documentation requests took over five months to fulfill, while requests for meetings took two months  to schedule.  

Leonie Haimson is the co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, a member of the NYSED Data Privacy Advisory Committee, the Chancellor’s Data Privacy Working Group and the Chancellor’s AI Working Group

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Last night at the PEP, we defeated another AI product, this time for Prek to 2nd graders

April 30, 2026

Last night was an eye-opening evening at the Panel for Educational Policy.  After gathering outside for a short rally led by the indomitable teacher-activist Martina Meijer,  we entered the school building to join other parents as the meeting began at 6 PM.

Though thankfully, the proposal for the AI high school was scrapped before the meeting,  because of parent pushback, along with several controversial plans to relocate, close and truncate a number of Manhattan schools, there were still plenty of parents eager to speak, as well as many students who were there to advocate for expanding the Lower Manhattan Community Middle School through 12^th grade,  now that space in their building will be available since the AI High school will not be taking up room in 26 Broadway.

Attendees also spoke out against the budget, the capital plan, and of course AI.  I urged the  the panelists to vote against the capital plan, which would provide less than half the space necessary than the School Construction Authority itself has admitted for the DOE to comply with the class size law.

The SCA itself testified last month that  they are in the process of revising the plan to make it better able to allow for smaller classes, so that any vote to approve it now was clearly premature.  Many others in the audience as well as the panelists themselves pointed out other critical deficiencies with the plan, as well as the general incompetence of the SCA, given the excessive costs and delays in their completion of projects, as well as their chronic lack of responsiveness to community input. 

Yet the capital plan passed easily anyway, as it has every year – showing yet again how inadequate Mayoral control is as a system in requiring real accountability from our governmental agencies.

However, the numerous comments of parents against the rush to install AI in our classrooms seemed to have an effect, particularly as one of the contracts on the agenda for an AI program called Age of Learning, designed for students in grades PreK to 2^nd grade, was voted down. 

 

This rejection was despite the fact that three different representatives of the company including its owner were there to speak  in its defense, though their presence seemed to annoy the panel members more than impress them.   

 

Several of the panel members themselves spoke against the expansion of AI, including the two student members and Manhattan parent member Naveed Hasan.  Debra Altman, the Staten Island parent member, said that the main problem in our schools was less AI than excessive screen time, and that the PEP should  pass a resolution similar to the one recently passed by the Los Angeles school board, that would limit computer use in schools and potentially allow parents to opt out.  That would be terrific.  

  

I want to thank all the parents and teachers who came out in support of a moratorium, and spoke so eloquently and clearly on the dangers that AI pose to their children. The video of the meeting is here; many of the comments are illuminating a.  I especially want to point out the dynamite speech of Rev. LaTicia Thompson of CEC 8 at 1:51, who  said   “Until we have system-wide STEAM programs,  AI is a ‘NO’. Until every child can have recess outside in a state-of-the-art yard, AI is a ‘NO’. And until we really leave no child left behind, AI is a ‘NO’.'

 

Please also remember to purchase a ticket to our dinner on May 19,  honoring Diane Ravitch, if you want us to be able to keep advocating on the need to lower class size, protect student privacy and/or keep AI out of our schools!

 

thanks Leonie  

 

_____

 

 

Comments on the Capital Plan:

 

My name is Leonie Haimson, and I’m the executive director of Class Size Matters. 

I urge you to vote no on the capital plan, which according to SCA officials funds fewer than half the seats necessary to provide enough space to allow schools to comply with the class size law.  The SCA also testified to the City Council last month that the current plan is now being revised to better align with the law, and although I do not know if this is true, it does show that any vote now to approve it is premature.  

Moreover, of those new school seats that are funded, more than half have no sites, and nearly 40% are unspecified as to district or grade level.  This lack of transparency violates not just the class size law, but also Local Law 167, passed by the City Council in 2018. 

Approving such an inherently flawed capital plan also flies in the face of a resolution passed by the PEP School Utilization Committee on March 18, over a month ago, which calls on the DOE to produce a real class size reduction plan, that would describe where the 495 schools will receive additional space that DOE says are too overcrowded at their current enrollment to lower class size to mandated levels and to amend the capital plan accordingly. 

These 495 schools enroll nearly half of all non-D 75 students.  Yet the DOE has blocked this resolution from coming to a vote of the full PEP.  One has to doubt their commitment to lowering class size to the levels that all kids need and deserve, and are their right under the law. 

Thank you for your time.

_____

 

Comments on the Contracts:

 

My name is Leonie Haimson,  and I am also the co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student privacy, a member of the Chancellor’s Privacy Working group, and a member of the AI Working Group.  Even though we were promised to have input on the AI guidance several times, we were denied that opportunity, and the guidance is deeply flawed.

 

I along with many other parents continue to have serious concerns about the expansion of AI in our schools.  Many AI products have been pushed on schools in the last few weeks, including Google Gemini, which prompts kids to ask for its help with writing or drawing pictures when they log into their Chromebooks.  Teachers are receiving emails from the vendors using their DOE email addresses, promoting their AI products.

 

Moreover, tonight a contract for the Age of Learning is to be voted on, described as providing a “personalized learning” journey for kids in grades PreK to 2nd grade,  to teach them math and ELA with videos, games etc..  While it claims that “this contract contains no AI products; an optional feature includes the ability to use AI to generate recommendations based on de-identified student assessments.”  I don’t know how a product can make personalized recommendations to students without the vendor knowing their identity.  And kids that young shouldn’t be on devices at all. 

 

While we rally for a moratorium on AI, DOE officials mingle in San Diego with ed tech vendors and executives

 

4/20/26 Update:  It appears that at least 18 top DOE officials attended the ASU-GSV conference co-sponsored by Google in San Diego last week, including at least ten district superintendents. 

On Thursday April 16, we rallied in City Hall Park, and called on the Mayor to place  a moratorium on the use of AI for two years.  Parents, students, teachers and advocates explained how AI poses clear risks to student privacy, their cognitive and skill development, creativity, emotional and mental health and the environment.  Here is our coalition's press release, and articles about the rally in Fortune, Daily News, and Politico.  

Serendipitously, the same day as our rally, the national group Fairplay released a letter, signed onto by more than 200 education and childhood organizations, as well as experts on mental health and medical professionals, asking for a five-year moratorium.  Josh Golin, the Fairply Executive Director, attended our rally and he is shown speaking above. 

 

After the rally, a bunch of us walked to the East entrance of City Hall, where students handed the Fairplay letter and our petition to Ailish Brady, Senior Advisor for Education, to the First Deputy Mayor. 

I also handed her a copy of the NYC Kids PAC candidate survey filled out by Zohran Mamdani when  he was running for mayor, in which he criticized "Eric Adams’ cavalier approach" to AI,  and promised to consult parents, teachers and students before implementing careful guardrails. 

Last week, at about the same time, at least seven eighteen high-ranking DOE officials were attending the ASU-GSV [Global Silicon Valley] conference in San Diego, mingling with ed tech vendors and executives, including Dr. Miatheresa Pate, the DOE chief academic officer, who led the aggressive AI expansion in NYC schools during the Adams administration and is still running it now. 

As Sue Edelman in her Substack article points out, the cost of attendee registration ranges from $2,450 to $3,850 per person -- all at a time when the Mayor has asked city agencies including DOE to make big cuts because of the city's billion dollar deficits. In addition, Dr. Pate was named a Google GSV Education Innovation Fellow, the conference itself was subsidized by Google, as was the development of the pitifully weak AI guidance put out by DOE a few weeks ago. 

Recently, the DOE placed Google Gemini, the company's AI platform on its TeachHub site, and is encouraging teachers to assign it to their students, despite the serious privacy and mental health concerns expressed by Fairplay, EPIC, and others. At the rally, I related a story a friend told me about what happened in her ten-year-old son's this week, related to the use of Google Gemini. See my comments below.

___

Hi, my name is Leonie Haimson, and I’m the co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.  Guess who wrote the following in response to a question asking him for his position on the use of AI in the classroom, when he was running for office last spring: 

“Eric Adams’ cavalier approach to AI in schools is in keeping with his lack of support for our schools and sensitivities to the needs of teachers, students, and parents. I support regulating Al. AI can be a useful tool if deployed effectively, but it can also harm children’s ability to think critically and to write. It should not be expanded without careful guardrails. As Mayor, I would work directly with teacher, parent, and student groups to establish those guardrails and move forward with any expansion after careful deliberation.”

Yet right now, Mayor Mamdani is continuing the course that Eric Adams begam – rushing ahead with the expansion of AI without careful guardrails or any actual consultation with teachers, parents and students. 

The only group who had input into the awful DOE AI guidance recently released was an AI advisory Council appointed by Chancellor Banks shortly before he left office whose members were primarily DOE educrats and ed tech vendors.  

I was appointed to an AI working group by Chancellor Ramos and though we were repeatedly told that we would be able to give feedback on the guidance before it was released we were never provided with that opportunity.  

In fact, the DOE completely sidelined and stonewalled us, and they refused even to give us the names of AI products currently used in schools along with their privacy policies, saying this would their violate their non-disclosure agreements with their vendors.   

Dr. Miatheresa Pate, DOE Chief Academic Officer, who is leading the push for more AI use in NYC schools is a Google fellow and this week she is speaking at an ed tech conference sponsored by Google.   

Sure enough, a few weeks ago the DOE put Google’s AI  product called Gemini on TeachHub and started encouraging teachers to use it, without any consultation with parents or privacy experts.  

Yesterday a friend of mine told me that her son, a fifth grader in a NYC public school, was assigned to  read a poem together with his classmates.  They were then asked to draw a picture about the poem.  But  teacher also told them if they didn’t want to draw a picture,  they could simply upload the poem into Google Gemini and it would create the image for them.  Is this the sort of education we want for our kids? 

Mayor Mamdani, you recently said that you don’t use AI yourself, so why are you foisting it on our kids, when research shows it will undermine not only their privacy but their creativity, cognitive skills, critical thinking and exacerbate climate change? 

We have a petition here signed by nearly 2,000 parents, educators and others, calling on you to stop before its too late, and impose a two year moratorium on the use of AI in the classroom, so that rigorous protections can be established to protect the quality of our children’s education, their safety, and their future. 

More than 200 education and childhood groups and experts including medical professionals signed onto the Fairplay letter, calling for a 5 year moratorium.  We hope that the Mayor will listen to our voices, stop catering to Google and other ed tech companies, and forge a new and more positive direction for our public schools.