LAUSD adopts moratorium on student AI use, another big move to limit classroom computer time

The Los Angeles public school district has enacted a moratorium on student use of generative artificial intelligence for the current school year, officials said this week, a major step with national significance that limits computer use in classrooms amid rising parent concerns about the reliance on technology in schools.

The moratorium came to light at the first meeting of a school board committee examining issues around the use of AI in schools — a surprise to board members who were told by their chief academic officer and their head of technology that the new policy means generative AI would be out of reach for all students on district devices until further notice.

Senior district administrators put the moratorium in place on their own authority in the spirit of complying with the school board’s unanimous June vote to limit student screen time. Under the screen-time policy, students have no access to screens until the second grade and permissible screen time is gradually expanded as students get older.

Board member Kelly Gonez said that, to her knowledge, the district was still following an earlier policy that made AI available to older students after they had completed instructional units on digital literacy and responsibility.

“I, even as a board member,” was “under the expectation that we were still operating under last year’s policy,” Gonez said. “The fact that it’s different today, this school year, is important.”

“Breaking news here in the committee,” Gonez said later, smiling.

Board member Nick Melvoin also expressed surprise, although like Gonez, he did not object to the de facto moratorium. He said it was important for the word to get out, while noting that the school board had not authorized this significant step.

“If the policy is we’re not going to allow students [to] use generative AI for the meantime, then we should publicize that,” Melvoin said. “But also, that didn’t really come from the board, so I’m of two minds on that right now … just expressing some discomfort.”

The revelation came on a big day in related news: The New York City school system will ban student-facing generative AI tools, such as chatbots and tutors that respond to prompts, in preschool through eighth-grade classrooms, while allowing limited AI use in high schools.

Activist parents applaud policy

L.A. Unified’s current handling of AI could make it a leader in restricting its use. At least that was the view of activist parents who attended the meeting to call for an AI moratorium and then found it to be in place.

“This is unlike any public comment I’ve ever made,” said parent Bridie Lee, one of the leaders of the group Schools Beyond Screens L.A. “I’m not going to read my carefully crafted statement ... I would like to make it crystal clear to everyone reporting on this today that LAUSD has made history again. That apparently we have an AI moratorium, which we have been advocating for in all grades in LAUSD.”

She added: “Thank you to the team for listening to the evidence, the facts, and perhaps our work here is done.”

The step also was praised by the nonprofit Common Sense Media.

“Los Angeles Unified School District is taking the time needed to address the significant risks associated with student use of generative AI,” said Media Chief Program Officer Yvette Renteria, a former school principal. “Much work should be done during this year, including teaching AI literacy — which doesn’t require kids to use AI.”

“Many leading AI products are not designed for safety or to properly support learning,” she added. “Our research also shows that AI use has become almost ubiquitous in the lives of American teens and tweens — and even when it’s banned at school, students use it on personal devices.”

Jing Lei, a Syracuse University professor and an expert in education technology, said that simply banning or allowing technology is not enough unless schools also examine the quality of its use.

For example, she said, “banning young children [from] technology use excludes them from learning from meaningful educational opportunities through technology, while 20 minutes of technology use for older students can be 20 minutes too many if these 20 minutes are not intentionally designed ... to support meaningful learning outcomes.”

Major development in New York

The New York policy was announced by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels. In New York City, the mayor has ultimate control of the school system through the authority to appoint the chancellor. The policy puts in place a moratorium for the current school year on student-facing generative AI through grade eight, affecting nearly 600,000 students.

For high school students, the school system will begin five AI pilots. Every public high school student will be required to complete two 45-minute AI-literacy modules, covering what AI is and is not, as well as bias, risks, ethics, careers and future skills.

Companion chatbots are prohibited across all grades. The same announcement established a new screen-time policy and, like L.A. Unified, allows older students more screen time for instruction.

With its total moratorium, L.A. Unified has gone beyond what New York is doing. But New York has articulated a more specific immediate approach, whereas L.A. Unified officials are determining nearly from scratch what they want to do.

At least 37 states have issued AI guidance for schools. There is no single national definition of AI literacy and no national consensus on how schools should teach it.

What is generative AI?

Generative AI relies on underlying patterns from existing data to predict and produce new outputs, rather than just copying or sorting existing information. Generative AI can synthesize and extrapolate in valuable ways, but it also can produce wrong answers or take on tasks that educators would see as inappropriate or counterproductive — such as writing papers for students. There is even AI that will make such papers look as if they were written by students by inserting a few errors or current slang terms.

The L.A. district will make use of non-generative AI for education purposes.

“Examples of non-generative AI in the classroom include adaptive learning systems that adjust the difficulty of questions based on a student’s performance, speech-recognition tools that support reading fluency or dictation,” the district said in written responses to a query. AI also can be used, when helpful academically, to convert text to speech or vice versa, provide live captioning and for translation.

Also, students can still use Google to search for information, but they cannot use Google’s “AI Mode” to have a conversation with AI. AI Mode has been turned off on student accounts and devices.

Google searches may still show a short AI-generated summary at the top of the results page, but students cannot ask follow-up questions or interact with the AI through AI Mode.

“Google is working on a technical update that would allow administrators to turn that feature off completely,” a district spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, for younger students, the Los Angeles screen-time restrictions took effect with the start of school. The new limits are being phased in for older students as the year progresses.

The AI moratorium applies to district-owned devices. There is not yet a district policy on what students can do on non-district devices, said Chief Academic Officer Pia Sadaqatmal.

However, if students access AI on their own devices while logged into their school accounts, that activity can be tracked, said Douglas Le, interim chief information officer.

Teachers are not barred from using AI on district devices, but there is currently no districtwide system in place for teachers to use AI to grade student work, for example, or “identify academic dishonesty,” as the district put it.

The Wednesday meeting was the first for a board committee looking at AI issues. Three of the seven board members are assigned to the committee. Also participating was board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin, who said she looked forward to helpful AI applications, such as one that would help parents access and understand information about the school district budget.