by Michelle Mullen

New York City public school students in 2-K through eighth grade are barred from using generative artificial intelligence this school year.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a one-year moratorium on the technology that also limits individual screen time for younger students. The policy, for the 2026-27 school year, will affect nearly 600,000 students, or about two-thirds of the public school system’s enrollment, according to the city.

The initiative prohibits software that uses student-facing generative AI through eighth grade and bans companion chatbots across all grades. High school students will instead receive AI literacy instruction, while a limited number will be allowed to use approved AI programs under teacher supervision.

“Children need teachers and human connection in order to learn and grow,” Mamdani said in a press release. “They need to develop skills alongside their peers, build relationships with educators and wrestle with tough problems on their own.”

Mamdani said the administration does not accept the idea that AI-powered education for young children is inevitable and will spend the coming year studying the technology before determining its future place in schools.

For Riverdale parent Eric Tung, whose daughters are in third and seventh grade, the shift comes after years in which individual devices became an increasingly common part of school.

Tung said his older daughter received a school-issued device to take home while attending P.S. 81, as schools moved to remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. His younger daughter, now a third grader at P.S. 81, also has a school-issued iPad.

While Tung believes children need to become comfortable with technology, he said easy access to information can come at the expense of understanding how to research, compare sources and solve problems independently.

“There’s also an art that’s lost with the process of discovery, the process of learning, finding out information,” Tung said.

Those skills are especially important as AI-generated material becomes more difficult to distinguish from information created by people, he said.

“I think what I try to do with my kids is make them aware that AI is out there and not everything that you see is real,” Tung said. “Do more research, you know, look into it, do your own thinking.”

Council member Eric Dinowitz, who chairs the New York City Council’s education committee, said the new rules address several concerns he and education advocates raised with the New York City Department of Education, though he believes questions remain.

Beyond the existing restrictions, Dinowitz said, the city needs to provide stronger evidence showing how technology that remains in classrooms improves student learning.

Under the new screen-time policy, students in second grade and below will face restrictions on one-to-one device use, according to the city — which recommends no more than 30 minutes of individual screen time per day for students in third through fifth grade and no more than 45 minutes for those in sixth through eighth grade.

Dinowitz said the fact that those limits are recommendations rather than requirements leaves room for wide differences among schools.

“What the screen time actually looks like, what’s on the screen, how it’s being used pedagogically, those are gaps,” he said, adding that teachers will also need professional development and support to use technology effectively.

“My baseline is that any tool that enters a classroom should have demonstrable positive effects on kids,” Dinowitz said.

Matt Carter, a Riverdale parent with a first grader at P.S. 81 and a child in 3-K, also welcomed the moratorium.

Carter is a professor in the music department at the City College of New York and serves on an AI advisory committee within the college’s division of arts and humanities. The group has spent the past year reviewing research and considering how instructors should approach AI in higher education.

At the college level, Carter said, faculty members are already confronting students’ use of AI to complete assignments and raising concerns that an emphasis on efficiency can undermine the purpose of education.

“If the goal is to sharpen your critical thinking skills, your contextual learning, your understanding about the world, and thinking for yourself, then you wouldn’t use AI,” Carter said. “Because that doesn’t help you in those skills.”

Carter said he hopes the city will eventually explain what evidence would be required to end the ban.

“I hope that the moratorium extends beyond a year,” he said. “I would love to know what would need to happen that would have them lift this moratorium.”

However, the city is not eliminating AI education altogether.

All high school students will receive two 45-minute AI literacy modules during the school year covering what AI is and is not, as well as its biases, risks, ethics and its potential effects on careers and future skills.

Up to 50,000 high school students will also participate in limited pilots using five approved programs, according to the city — Quill, Edia, Brisk Teaching, Playlab and Intel AI-Ready Schools. The pilots will be limited to no more than five classes per high school and must operate under the supervision of trained educators.

According to the city, teachers can continue using approved AI programs for lesson planning and operational tasks. Exceptions will also be available for assistive technology used by students with disabilities, multilingual learners and students in career-readiness programs such as computer science.

Dinowitz said restricting younger students from directly using generative AI does not prevent schools from preparing them for a future in which the technology is increasingly common.

“The skills that are foundational to the understanding and usage of AI do not necessarily need the usage of AI,” he said. “We have to give our kids the skills to use it safely before they start using it.”

A new “Technology in Schools Coalition” of students, educators, parents, elected officials, advocates, union representatives and experts will review the moratorium and high school pilots over the school year and issue recommendations for future years, the city said.

Keywords

New York City public schools,

NYC schools,

generative AI,

artificial intelligence in schools,

AI moratorium,

AI in education,

Mayor Zohran Mamdani,

Kamar Samuels,

NYC Department of Education,

NYCPS,

screen time,

student-facing AI,

2-K,

elementary school,

middle school,

high school,

Riverdale,

Bronx,

P.S. 81,

Eric Tung,

Matt Carter,

Eric Dinowitz,

AI literacy,

AI education,

education technology,

Technology in Schools Coalition,

Quill,

Edia,

Brisk Teaching,

Playlab,

Intel AI-Ready Schools