Overview
- Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels announced on Sept. 2 a one‑year moratorium for 2‑K through 8th grade that bars student‑facing generative AI for roughly 600,000 public school students.
- High school access will be limited to teacher‑supervised pilots from five vetted vendors and two short AI literacy lessons per student each year, with pilots capped at about 50,000 students and strict weekly time limits.
- Teachers may use approved AI for lesson planning, translations and operational tasks but are forbidden from using AI for grading, crisis counseling, behavior monitoring, or promotion and graduation decisions.
- The policy restricts one‑to‑one devices for the youngest students and recommends daily screen‑time caps of 30 minutes for grades 3–5 and 45 minutes for grades 6–8 while exempting required assistive technology and supports for multilingual learners.
- City officials will disable AI components in more than 30 existing products, form a Technology in Schools Coalition to review outcomes and issue recommendations after the year, and face practical challenges in spotting embedded AI, policing home use, and enforcing vendor safeguards.