Key Takeaways

  • Twenty-four of 45 school board candidates signed a pledge seeking a three-year pause on AI use by Chicago Public Schools students and educators.
  • The proposal also calls for tighter screen-time rules, a chief privacy officer, and an end to collecting student biometric data.
  • The debate presents education technology vendors with a rising demand for privacy controls, evidence of learning value, and stronger implementation support.

Calls to slow artificial intelligence adoption are becoming a defining issue in Chicago’s first fully elected school board campaign. According to Chalkbeat, 24 of the 45 candidates have signed a pledge calling for a three-year pause on AI use by Chicago Public Schools students and educators.

Illinois Families for Public Schools wrote the pledge. It goes beyond generative AI, seeking no school screen time before third grade, reduced screen time in later grades, a district chief privacy officer, and a halt to collecting student biometric data, including voice recordings.

The head of Illinois Families for Public Schools framed the proposal as a response to an unfavorable risk calculation. “The risks of AI are absolutely outweighing the benefits right now,” they said.

The concern is partly about data governance. AI applications can collect prompts, writing samples, voice recordings, behavioral information, and other student-generated material. Schools then have to determine where that information is stored, whether vendors can use it to improve their systems, how long it is retained, and what recourse families have when something goes wrong.

But this is also a teaching debate. One appointed board member and candidate said she signed the pledge because AI could weaken creativity, writing skills, and students’ ability to identify misinformation.

“It’s extremely important to take an approach of caution and care so we raise a generation that has critical thinking abilities and understands the importance of using multiple sources of information,” the candidate said.

A three-year pause represents a long interval in both education and technology procurement. It could give Chicago Public Schools time to establish standards, train educators, and study classroom outcomes. It could also leave teachers improvising around tools that students already encounter outside school.

That tension explains why some education leaders oppose a broad moratorium. The former CPS CEO who now leads the Education and Society Program at the Aspen Institute noted that an outright ban would be unproductive. Schools, they argued, still have a responsibility to prepare students to use AI without exposing them to avoidable harm.

CPS says it has taken a deliberate, responsible approach to artificial intelligence. The Illinois State Board of Education has pointed districts toward the CPS AI guidebook as an example. High school students have also helped create a Student Voice AI Council and draft a Student AI Playbook.

Still, the district has already demonstrated a willingness to stop deployment when readiness is uncertain. A plan to give high school students access to Gemini, Google’s AI chatbot, through Google Classroom accounts was paused in May following teacher feedback, with CPS citing individual school readiness and educator training.

That decision may offer a middle path: pause specific implementations rather than prohibit an entire technology category. One unopposed candidate captured the uncertainty neatly: “I am concerned that on AI, we are building the plane while we’re flying it.”

What would credible guardrails look like? The NIST Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework organizes AI oversight around four functions: Govern, Map, Measure, and Manage. Although voluntary, that structure can help school systems define ownership, document intended uses, assess risks, monitor outcomes, and suspend applications that fail to meet district standards.

The OECD Recommendation on Artificial Intelligence, revised in 2024, offers another reference point. Its principles cover human rights, transparency, robustness, accountability, and inclusive growth, while explicitly addressing general-purpose and generative AI risks. Applied in schools, those ideas could translate into plain-language disclosures, human review of consequential decisions, age-appropriate restrictions, and testing for biased or unreliable outputs.

For education technology providers, the message is getting harder to miss. Product capability alone will not settle procurement decisions. Vendors may increasingly be asked to support data minimization, deletion controls, independent evaluation, teacher administration, age-based access, and clear restrictions on model training with student information.

Chicago is not acting in isolation. Illinois has adopted limits on student cellphone use, Los Angeles approved a policy banning screen time before second grade, and New York City is introducing restrictions on student AI use in elementary and middle school. The details differ, but the direction is similar: districts want more control over when technology enters classrooms and who bears responsibility for its effects.

Can schools teach AI literacy while limiting premature deployment? That is the practical question underneath the campaign dispute. Chicago Public Schools may ultimately choose a moratorium, a phased rollout, or tighter use-specific controls. Either way, the board race signals that classroom AI governance now requires formal oversight and proven educational value, with educators, families, students, and technology suppliers all facing closer scrutiny.