Our forum on the risks of using AI in schools, and sign our petition calling for a moratorium!

 

Above is a video of the forum held on Dec. 6, with panelists including Sen. Kristen Gonzalez, students, teachers, parents, and professionals from a variety of fields.  They explained the risks of AI, to student privacy, cognitive development, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and emotional wellbeing, as well as to the local and global environment. 

Now we have posted a petition, urging Mayor-elect Mamdani, a to support a two-year moratorium on AI use in NYC public schools.  This moratorium would allow the DOE to establish rigorous processes for responsibly assessing the risks and impacts of AI, before introducing these programs in classrooms and schools.   If you agree, please sign our petition now!  Also see this AI Toolkit, with links to resolutions for CECs, posted by Parents for AI Caution. 

 

·       AI undermines children’s ability to learn. AI use in schools has a negative impact on students’ cognitive skills, critical thinking, and creativity. It undermines the relationship between teachers and students, which is at the center of how students learn. The RAND Corporation’s report on AI in K-12 contexts finds no teaching and learning gains from AI use. In fact, there is increasing evidence that AI use in educational contexts rewires your brain. An MIT team found a significant decrease in brain activity among students asked to write an essay using AI. Research suggests that students do worse when "taught" by AI instead of human teachers. There is also racial, ethnic, and gender bias built into AI models, which influences the feedback students are given and the material they are exposed to. Finally, there is increasing evidence of the mental health toll of AI: children have formed “romantic relationships” with chatbots, and several tech companies are being sued because their platforms coached children into dying by suicide.

 

·       AI invades our students’ privacy and puts them at risk of surveillance. AI use in schools undermines student privacy, as most AI-enabled programs data-mine, meaning they collect and process personal information for commercial purposes and product improvement, which violates the New York student privacy law Ed Law 2D. Currently, parents have no means of knowing how their children’s sensitive biometric data is being used by AI companies like Amira, which collects student voices.  The State Education Department has issued guidance  that schools should not allow the collection of  biometric data  without parent input, but Amira is  widely used  without any such input. 

  

·       AI undermines a “Green and Healthy Schools” agenda and our city’s climate goals. AI is driving fossil fuel expansion and thus fueling climate collapse; MIT researchers estimate that “by 2026, the electricity consumption of data centers will rival that of whole countries like Japan or Russia.” AI data centers are also consuming our drinking water at a moment when climate change is leading to more frequent droughts. NYC children, particularly students of color, unhoused students, and low-income students, already face harms from fossil fuels, including air pollution, flooding, and extreme heat. All of these negatively impact their ability to thrive and learn. If large consumers like NYC public schools continue to fuel AI data center growth, our children will face more catastrophic disasters, famine and mass displacement. 

 

·       AI use in schools undermines an affordability and worker-first agenda. Data center expansion is driving up electricity prices for working New Yorkers. Meanwhile, the funds used for expensive contracts for ed-tech could instead be used to expand universal childcare, reduce class sizes, upgrade aging school buildings, or otherwise benefit students, educators and families.  

An AI moratorium should be a top priority for the Mamdani administration in the first 100 days. The largest school system in the country should use its purchasing power and moral authority to protect children, not leave them subject to a surveillance experiment that will undermine learning and leave them a world on fire. There is overwhelming support for a moratorium from across the political spectrum: CECs are already passing resolutions supporting an AI moratorium, and parents and teachers have repeatedly made their voices heard against AI contracts at PEP meetings. The ban on cellphones in schools has been an overwhelming success—but it came ten years too late. Let’s not make the same mistake with AI.

 

Signed by:

Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

Alliance for Quality Education 

Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

Class Size Matters

The Circle Keepers

NYC Kids PAC

Zephyr Teachout, Law Professor, Fordham Law School

Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, PhD, Assoc.Professor Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; Pres. CEC4

Liat Olenick MSEd, Climate Families NYC

Martina Meijer, MORE-UFT

Kelly Clancy, PhD, CEC-20, Parents for AI Caution

Oscar Romero, Educator 

Kyle DeAngelis, 3rd Grade Teacher, UFT Chapter Leader, MORE-UFT

Alina Lewis, PhD, CEC-20, President of the Brooklyn School of Inquiry PTO

Mustafa Sullivan, Coalition for Educational Justice

Lauren Monaco, Early Childhood Educator, UFT Chapter Leader, MORE-UFT

Letter to PEP members on why they should vote down AI products on tomorrow's agenda -- again!

Update:  The Panel for Eductional Policy voted down all four AI contracts at their Dec. 17 meeting, by a large margin!  Parent and community opposition is starting to have an impact.  Thanks to all of you who wrote in, and thanks for the PEP members who voted no!  A video of the meeting is here. 

 From: leoniehaimson@gmail.com <leoniehaimson@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2025 4:07 PM
To: Panel for Educational Policy <Panel@schools.nyc.gov>;

 Subject:  Please reject the four AI products on the PEP agenda for Wednesday & take a safety-first approach

 

Dear PEP members: 

Last June, the Chancellor appointed me to an AI Working Group to help develop guidelines and guard posts to ensure the safe use of AI in schools.  This is especially critical,  given how most AI products data-mine personal student information and commercialize the data to improve their products, which violates our state student privacy law,  NY Ed Law 2D.  

Thirty-one States and most large districts now have guidelines for the use of AI in schools, but not NY State or New York City.  

Yet our Working Group has been stymied, sidelined and stonewalled at every step of the way, and refused the most basic information, including the names of AI products currently used in schools, along with their privacy policies. 

 Much of the research on AI use suggests that it may undermine not only student privacy, but also their cognitive development, critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative skills,  weakening the human connection that is essential to a quality education.  

More recently, the rapid expansion of AI has led to a surge in electricity use and prices, and a sharp increase in the use of fossil fuels that pose a special threat to the global climate.  

Both Kiddom and Khan Academy AI products have been found to convey factual errors; and EPS collects and processes student voices, which are considered such sensitive biometric data that the state has advised parent input prior to its use. 

Three of these four AI vendors and their products on the PEP agenda were already voted down just two months ago, at the October PEP meeting.  It is unwise and irresponsible to adopt additional AI products without rigorous protections in place. 

I urge you to reject these contracts, rather than rush to approve them in a last minute push, before the new Mayor can take office, who will hopefully adopt a more precautionary, safety-first approach. 

Thank you for your consideration, 

Leonie Haimson, Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

Comment by Gavin Healy on proposed revision to Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 concerning Citywide & Community Council conduct

See below comment sent by Gavin Healy, parent leader and attorney, in opposition to the proposed revision to Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 concerning Citywide and Community Education Council conduct and complaint procedures, due to be voted on next week, December 17 Panel for Education Policy meeting,  at the Evander Childs Educational Campus (800 East Gun Hill Road, Bronx, New York 10467). All documents for this meeting  including contracts for four controversial AI products, including three that were voted down at the Oct. 2025 meeting, and the proposed regulation can  found on the PEP SharePoint file here. 

This Chancellor's Regulation revision grew out of a dispute and a lawsuit filed  by March 2024 three CCEC members challenging the constitutionality of the existing version of Chancellor’s Regulation D-210, issued on December 22, 2021, claiming it chilled free speech and viewpoint expression.  Among the allegations of the named plaintiff, Deborah Alexander, was that she was unfairly ejected from a CEC 14 meeting because she had expressed political views contrary to the chair and the vice chair at the time. 

In a preliminary injunction, the court found the regulation both unconstitutionally vague  and a violation of Free Speech.  

What is somewhat ironic is that I was summarily ejected from a Zoom meeting of the Citywide Council of High Schools on Wed. December 10, right before I was going to provide comment on a proposed resolution on the class size law, pointing out how the resolution was both factually inaccurate and unnecessary, given its purported aims. The author of that resolution and the co-chair of the CCHS is Deborah Alexander, the named plaintiff in the above lawsuit.

From: Gavin Healy <ghealy@cecd2.net>
Date: 11 December 2025 at 10:53:39 AM GMT-5
To: RegulationD-210@schools.nyc.gov, panel@schools.nyc.gov
Cc: Greg Faulkner <gregfaulkner1@gmail.com>, r.izquierdo06@gmail.com, CCasaretti@schools.nyc.gov, Marielle Ali <MAli38@schools.nyc.gov>, NHasan3@schools.nyc.gov, Adriana Alicea <AAlicea6@schools.nyc.gov>, Naveed Hasan <naveed@cs.columbia.edu>, Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos <NYCPSChancellor@schools.nyc.gov>, DMantell2@schools.nyc.gov, Noah Means-simonsen <NMeanssimonsen@schools.nyc.gov>
Subject: Comments on Revisions to Chancellor's Regulation D-210

Dear members of the Panel for Educational Policy: 

I am writing to urge you to table a vote on the revised Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 and/or amend the current revised draft. 

My concerns are as follows: 

(1)  The revised regulations conflate incivility with serious unlawful conduct  

The revised version includes necessary prohibitions against discrimination/harassment (IV.A.), threats of violence (IV.B.), disclosure of private student information under FERPA (IV.D. and IV.F.), and use of a CCEC position for personal financial benefit (IV.G.), all of which may be actionable under state/federal criminal law.  

However, IV.C. adds a new prohibition against “disruptive Conduct or Speech that prevents, or is reasonably likely to prevent, the CCEC from conducting business (including, but not limited to Conduct or Speech such as shouting, profanity or physical outbursts, where such Conduct or Speech interferes with the CCEC conducting business).” It is concerning that these revised regulations equate matters of simple civility and decorum in CCEC meetings (already governed by CCEC by-laws, parliamentary procedure, etc.), which are not legally actionable, with more serious and legally actionable discrimination, harassment, and threats of violence. IV.C. should be deleted or moved to a new category separate from these other prohibitions to underscore the profoundly different legal and ethical nature of these types of conduct.  

(2)  The DOE failed to meaningfully engage all stakeholders (CCEC members, parents, students) in deliberation of these revisions: 

The original Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 was adopted by the PEP in December 2021 at the end of the DeBlasio administration. A new DOE position of “Equity Compliance Officer” was created under the regulations as the designated DOE official responsible for processing complaints filed thereunder. The regulations also mandated establishment of an “Equity Council” tasked with providing recommendations on the resolution of complaints. When Eric Adams took office as mayor in January 2022, the new administration dragged its feet on implementing these regulations. The DOE did not fill the required position of Equity Compliance Officer until February 2023, more than a year after the regulations were adopted. On October 27, 2023 then-FACE Deputy Chancellor Kenita Lloyd stated that Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 was “an unfunded mandate inherited from the previous administration,” implying that her office would not actively investigate complaints. It was not until late 2023 that FACE started to process complaints filed under Chancellor’s Regulation D-210, and it was not until February 2024 that positions on the Equity Council were filled and announced by FACE. 

In March 2024 three CCEC members filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of Chancellor’s Regulation D-210. Those three CCEC members are represented by the Institute for Free Speech (IFS), a right-wing group that has represented Moms for Liberty and Gays Against Groomers. IFS has also represented pro bono clients in efforts to invalidate college guidelines on anti-racism. In September 2024 the three CCEC plaintiffs were granted an injunction, preventing the DOE from enforcing the provisions of Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 that prohibit CCEC members from (1) “engaging in conduct that serves to harass, intimidate, or threaten others” and (2) “engaging in conduct involving derogatory or offensive comments about any DOE student.” Settlement negotiations have been ongoing since then between attorneys for the CCEC plaintiffs and attorneys for the DOE. These revisions to Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 are a result of those negotiations. 

The DOE held a 45-minute “engagement session” with CCEC presidents on October 14, 2025 to discuss the revisions, although no draft of the revisions was presented at that time. Some of the CCEC presidents in attendance at the session objected to the presence of at least one of the plaintiffs in the above lawsuit, commenting that it created an unsafe space for discussion of sensitive issues such as harassment and doxxing of minors. The DOE has not held any engagement sessions about the revisions with other CCEC members, parents, or students, and has not engaged in any meaningful solicitation of feedback from the broader community other than sending two emails to CCEC members notifying them of the PEP vote.  

Instead of rushing through a revised Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 to resolve a lawsuit filed by just three CCEC members, the PEP should table a vote until the DOE can engage in a more thoughtful deliberative process with parents, students, and CCEC members. Since the former Deputy Chancellor of FACE under the Adams administration declared that Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 is an “unfunded mandate inherited from the previous administration,” it would be better for the new mayoral administration that will take office in January 2026 to handle these revisions, since it will be the new administration that will be tasked with implementing them. 

Respectfully,

Gavin Healy

Member, CEC2 (writing in my personal capacity)