Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here at the Navy Yard's Brooklyn STEAM Center alongside parents, students and partners who are helping us build the future of public education in our city. I want to acknowledge we have a number of leaders both inside and outside of City government here with us. We have our New York City Public Schools Chancellor, Kamar Samuels. We have a number of his leadership team that are here with us, both standing alongside us while seated here in the crowd.
We also have our Assembly Member Bobby Carroll, the chair of the Education Technology Committee, who is here with us. Our Council Member Rita Joseph, the chair of the Higher Education Committee. We have our Council Member Lincoln Restler. We are here in Council Member Restler's district. We are also here in State Sen. Jabari Brisport's district. And we are also here in Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon's district.
And we have alongside us our senior adviser for education, Ailish Brady, as well as our Brooklyn STEAM Center Founding Principal, Dr. Kayon Pryce, and Superintendent Michael Prayor, who's also here with us. Thank you all, to all of you.
Now, as parents and kids across New York City know, back-to-school season is a time of change and a time of challenge. It means the return of 6 a.m. wake-ups, the excitement of seeing friends again after a summer apart, and the perennial question for parents: How do we strike the right balance between screen time, extracurriculars, homework and time to just be a kid?
But in recent years, a new question has risen in the lives of students, parents and educators alike: how to navigate the advent of artificial intelligence in our society, and by extension, in our schools.
In just a few years, AI has gone from the pages of a sci-fi novel into something present in nearly every aspect of our lives. It is embedded in our maps and emails, in toasters and washing machines. It is present when we visit the doctor, when we cash a check, and when we settle down on the couch to watch a movie.
But just because technology is everywhere doesn't mean that it belongs everywhere. After all, each day when our children come to school, we teach them to ask questions, to challenge assumptions, to interrogate the premise, to ask, "Why?"
When it comes to AI in our schools, we hold an obligation to do the same. We must ask, what helps our children learn? How can we protect their developing minds? And how do we prepare them for a world in which new technologies will be increasingly built into it?
Today, I am proud to announce New York City's first-ever comprehensive AI policy for our public schools, City Hall's answer to those questions. It is the most comprehensive of its kind anywhere in the country, and it begins with a simple principle: Children need their teachers and human connection in order to learn and in order to grow. And they need to develop skills alongside their peers, build relationships with their teachers, and wrestle with tough problems on their own.
The tech industry wants us to believe that AI in early education is not only inevitable but that it is necessary. We do not see it that way. I have yet to see a study showing that AI is beneficial for students in elementary and middle school, with the exception, of course, of research sponsored by the very corporations that stand to profit. So, beginning this school year, we will implement a one-year moratorium on generative AI for students in 2-K through eighth grade.
I want to thank Gov. Hochul for helping pave the way with her efforts to ban cellphones and social media platforms in our schools. This moratorium is a commitment to getting the future right. A 6-year-old child is too young to slice an onion, to fry an egg or to use a stove safely. But once that child is 16, that knowledge becomes something they are mature enough to learn. That same principle applies to AI.
Whether we like it or not, our teenagers are growing up in an AI-saturated world. We cannot pretend that that world does not exist. It would be irresponsible not to prepare our children for the fast-evolving technological future that lies ahead. So, in high school, we will teach our students about AI, its opportunities and its pitfalls, its building blocks and its biases. And we will pilot five rigorously vetted educational AI programs that teachers have vouched for, like the programs that I just had the pleasure of trying alongside students here at Brooklyn STEAM. But I want to be very clear. In no way, shape or form will AI replace student-teacher interaction. It is the foundation of our students' educational experience. That will not change.
These pilots will have defined learning goals. Their use will be limited to a maximum of 45 minutes per week under direct teacher supervision. And none of these programs are chatbots. This pilot is not introducing ChatGPT, Claude or anything similar into our curricula.
At the same time, we know that AI has already found its way into many educational products that are being used in our classroom, sometimes without meaningful guardrails or oversight. That changes today. As part of this policy, we will fully discontinue or disable the AI components of more than 38 previously allowed programs that do not meet our new safety and oversight standards.
We will embrace new technology, but only when it serves our students. And at every step of the way, we will ensure that the challenge and struggle that are so critical for learning remain at the heart of our educational system. Kids need to learn to think for themselves. They need to work alongside their peers. They need to learn how to ask better questions. And they need to learn what it feels like to not know the answer. This is what learning is all about. And it is what city government is determined to protect.
This policy is not one that is set in stone. It is by design a finite one-year policy. Over the course of the coming school year, we will carefully monitor each of these programs and evaluate their impact and evaluate their success. And when the school year ends, we will sit down with teachers, parents, students and partners inside and outside our school system to determine what is working, what isn't working and what needs to change.
We know the purpose of AI companies. Whether they are making sports betting models or an education tool, it is to produce a profit. Here in our New York City Public Schools, our purpose is our students. It does not matter how profitable a product is. If it doesn't help our students learn and grow, we will not use that product.
New Yorkers deserve to know that their kids will receive a high-quality education. They deserve to know that their children's data won't be mined by big tech. And they deserve to know that their children's growth won't be compromised for a corporation's bottom line. Our job is to give every student the knowledge, the independence and the confidence they need to build a future of their own choosing. That means safeguarding the teacher-student relationship, refusing to surrender our classrooms to profit motives, and above all, it means protecting childhood.
I want to say thank you again to all of the New York City Public School staff, all of the New York City Public School leaders who are here today as well as beyond this room who helped us to develop this policy. It is a pleasure to stand here alongside so many leaders in this very conversation to institute a new policy to protect our students. Thank you.And with that being said, I want to pass it over to our chancellor, Kamar Samuels.
Kamar Samuels, Chancellor, New York City Public Schools: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you to NYC Public Schools, all staff, all our families who've helped us to get here today. Few issues in education generate as much buzz as artificial intelligence does. As chancellor of the nation's largest school system, a former teacher [and] a parent of three, here's what I know to be true.
Our kids learn best from great teachers. They learn best when they are wrestling with hard problems, when they're getting it wrong, when they're trying again and finally getting it right. That struggle isn't a flaw in the system - it is learning.
This is how a first grader sounds out a word. This is how an eighth grader learns to find "x". Now, no app, chatbot or algorithm can replicate that productive struggle for a child. And the moment we let that happen, we take an essential part of learning away from our students. I don't want technology to do our students' thinking for them. I don't want new technologies introduced into classrooms where our parents and our educators do not understand them. And we don't understand what they're doing and what information they're collecting.
At the same time, our children are growing up in a world being transformed by AI. We need to prepare them to navigate and thrive in that world. Over the last several months, we've listened to teachers, families, students, researchers and community members across our city. And today, I am here to announce the results of those conversations.
For our youngest learners, from 2-K through eight, we are implementing a moratorium for student-facing generative AI. Our elementary school and middle school classrooms will remain centered on what children at that age need: strong instruction, human interaction, play, discussion, creativity and the chance to work through hard problems themselves instead of outsourcing it to a machine.
For our high schoolers, our responsibility is different. It is increasingly part of the world and workforce they are about to enter. So, this year, we are launching limited, carefully controlled high school pilots that involve five vetted, approved AI programs. These programs will be under the direct supervision of a teacher. Additionally, students will be allowed to use AI under a teacher's supervision if participating in career programs such as CTE and professional learning pathways in order to develop skills that they require, they will require for career readiness.
Alongside the pilots and career readiness, the third component of our high school program is AI literacy. Every high school student will be required to do an AI literacy course comprised of 45-minute modules twice per year. This is to ensure students understand the risk and misinformation, overreliance on what it means to protect their ability to think critically without a tool doing it for them. Students in pilots and career programs will be required to take a longer, more in-depth AI literacy course as well.
We know a single rule doesn't fit every student the same way, so there will be exceptions. For certain students with disabilities, including legally mandated IEPs and 504 plans, the support will look different - and for multilingual learners. In these cases, we will be providing individualized supports in order to expand access.
Over the course of this year, we will study the results, closely [monitoring them] alongside our technology in schools coalition with real monitoring built in from day one. What we learn will directly shape our plans for the following year.
I know there will be some who think, "Well, we didn't go far enough." Or we didn't move faster with AI in schools. There are others who will think there's no place for AI in a classroom. I understand both instincts. But I don't believe either serves our students well. Instead, we need to protect the years when children need to wrestle with new concepts, think and learn from real teachers without shortcuts. And we need to prepare our older students carefully and deliberately for a world where AI is already a part of their daily life.
This is a standard I hold for my own children. It is a standard I held as a teacher and a superintendent. And it is a standard we will hold as NYC Public Schools because it is a standard all our students deserve. Thank you.
Mayor Mamdani: Thank you very much, chancellor. I'd now like to invite Assembly Member Bobby Carroll.
Assembly Member Robert C. Carroll: Good morning. Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. And let me commend Mayor Mamdani and Chancellor Samuels for this deeply thoughtful policy. Ensuring that children in K-2 through eighth grade are not interacting with AI, but instead receiving evidence-based instruction in foundational skills, is the exact right policy, while also making sure that high school students are being able to interact with the tools of the future in a controlled setting. This sets the perfect tone.
As the chair of the Libraries and Educational Technology Committee, I have legislation very similar to this. And I'm so glad that Mayor Mamdani and Chancellor Samuels are blazing a path not just for New York City, but for our entire state.
The only thing I must disagree with the mayor about is, let me tell you, Mr. Mayor, if you have a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, 6 a.m. wake-up calls happen all the time, not just during the school year.
But thank you so much for having us here together. I look forward to working with all of you on this deeply thoughtful policy. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the carve-out for students with disabilities is essential. And thank you for doing that as well. Thank you so much.
