Statement on closing of NYC Public Schools (NYCPS) Guidance on AI feedback window

Statement on closing of NYC Public Schools (NYCPS) Guidance on AI feedback window

For immediate release: May 8, 2025

For more information email tech.action@socialsits.nyc

Six (6) weeks after NYC Public Schools (NYCPS) released its official AI guidance, they have decided to close their poorly designed online feedback survey. This lackluster approach for collecting feedback on arguably the most high-stakes policy decision NYCPS has ever undertaken is especially frustrating considering their $44.6 billion budget and thousands of central staffing personnel. This approach pales in comparison to Mayor Mamdani’s successful launch and deployment of New York City’s first-ever Rental Ripoff Hearings, where tenants have been able to speak directly with city officials so their experiences can shape consequential policy reforms.

This rushed roll out of an enormously consequential policy has meant that substantive feedback has not been collected from over 900,000 families, thousands of teachers, thousands of administrators, and other key stakeholders. NYCPS Chancellor Samuels has shown that he is not meeting Mayor Mamdani’s mandate to have New Yorkers have a meaningful role in shaping city government policy. Given the lacking leadership by Chancellor Samuels on this topic, NYC-DSA Tech Action Working Group and partner organizations in the AI Moratorium (AIM) Coalition are organizing communities so NYCPS leadership can reckon with the sense of justified dread and concern New Yorkers have about unleashing unregulated Generative AI technology into our public schools. Most recently, we organized people so they could attend a 7-hour April 29th Panel for Education Policy (PEP) meeting to raise concerns about AI in schools.

Parents and other stakeholders have many reasons to lack confidence in NYCPS’s ability to oversee and govern technology. Only a few weeks ago, the New York State Comptroller’s Office completed an audit to determine if NYCPS consistently followed all laws and regulations regarding the privacy and security of students’ data. The audit covered the period from March 2020 through September 2025, and the Comptroller found that NYCPS does not follow basic standards (e.g. NIST CSF), has significant policy gaps, and has no means by which to track all of the technologies being deployed across all schools. NYCPS has a lengthy track record of neither modeling best technology practices (e.g. High school applications, Snow Day Remote learning, SESIS) or failing to protect student data (read AIM coalition partner’s blog).

There are some signs that our organizing is working, such as seeing NYCPS pause the rollout of an AI High School and rumblings that the Chancellor is open to a prohibition on students using AI in grades K-2.

However, we urge Mayor Mamdani and Chancellor Samuels to right the course and impose a 2-year moratorium on the use of generative AI in public schools.We can use that time to engage parents, students, teachers, and other stakeholders in building an AI policy for schools from the ground-up instead of this top-down approach. The consequences of a poorly rolled out AI policy for education will have lifelong impacts on our students and communities. It will also be harder to roll back and fix problems that get calcified into education policy, rather than taking our time to ensure that we are prioritizing the learning and success of NYC students over profits for AI companies.