Testimony on DOE’s shoddy privacy & AI policies; also lowlights & highlights from the hearing

June 25, 2026

Yesterday, joint hearings of the NYC Council Education and Technology committees were held.

At the hearing, the Chancellor did not testify but many other DoE officials testified including the First Deputy Chancellor Danielle Giunta.  Unfortunately, neither she nor anyone else offered any timeline when the revised AI guidelines would be released,  no date when the feedback survey results for those guidelines will be provided, no proposals as to how their privacy vetting would be improved despite the recent findings of the scathing Comptroller audit, and made no assurances that AI tools used in schools will be analyzed for racial bias.

Moreover, many of their responses to the Council’s questions were misleading, including the claim made by DOE’s Deputy Chief Information Officer that the Open Gen AI tool has “only been deployed to a very limited number of schools” mostly in D28,  and that “any student that interacts with that tool has gotten parental consent.”

Ignored by this answer is that another chatbot, Google Gemini, has been uploaded into the Chromebooks and used by many young students in NYC elementary schools throughout the city withoout consent.  Moreover, Google Gemini was recently independently tested and found to be one of the least safe chatbots for children.

Other lowlights from the hearing was a statement from Tara Carrozza, in charge of AI implementation that too many such tools are used in schools to be able to evaluate them for bias and equity.

Also dismaying was DOE Chief Privacy Officer Dennis Doyle’s statement that their data processing agreements with AI companies must be kept secret — even though these agreements are supposed to be publicly available, especially as many AI companies data-mine personal information in ways that violate the state student privacy law, as discussed in my testimony below.

The highlight for me was a panel of students explaining their fervent opposition to the use of AI, and how it steals from them the opportunity to develop their creativity and critical thinking that instead should be cultivated by their schools.

More on the shoddy, irresponsible privacy and AI policies and practices of the DOE described by my testimony here and below, along with comments made by a few of the thousands of signers of our AI moratorium petition, and an Appendix listing just some of the AI tools used in schools which the DOE has refused to provide.  I also comment and provide suggestions on how the two AI reporting bills introduced could be strengthened.

You can watch the hearing on YouTube here.  Unfortunately, the beginning of the hearing is cut off on YouTube; so to see the entire proceedings you need to go to the specific Council hearing page and click on the video link.

If you have serious concerns related to student privacy and/or the use of AI in the classroom,  you can upload written testimony to this Council webpage up to 72 hours following the close of the hearing which is Saturday, June 27, 2026 at about 6 PM. I suggest you also email it to your Councilmember and your State Legislators, to ensure they are alerted to your concerns. If you would like to share your testimony publicly, please email it to us at info@studentprivacymatters.org.   Thanks!

“