Aug 9 – Sep 8, 2026 · 5 items
The AI week, for a school principal
A real edition, written for: School Principal
The one thing
A large school district has just published the pupil-versus-staff AI split you are trying to write, so argue with theirs rather than starting from a blank page.
New York City has banned student-facing AI up to grade 8 for a year
New York City Public Schools will pause student-facing AI tools for one year. The ban covers pupils from a preschool programme for two-year-olds through 8th grade. It applies during the 2026-27 school year and reaches about two-thirds of enrolment. The city is also setting daily screen time caps for grades 3 through 8, and tighter one-to-one limits for 2nd grade and below. Teachers may still use AI for lesson planning and administrative work. Students with disabilities, multilingual learners and career readiness pupils are exempt. Every technology tool will be reviewed and barred if judged not essential to learning. The system is ending use of Amira, disabling Google's Gemini and blocking AI companion chatbots on school devices. Five AI programmes will be piloted at high school level with vetted tools. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said AI-powered early education is neither inevitable nor necessary.
Why it matters for you
You are drafting an AI policy for a secondary school. A large district has just published one you can argue with.
- The split is the useful part: pupils blocked, teachers still allowed AI for planning and admin
- Age bands, daily screen-time caps and named exemptions give you a structure to copy or reject
- Five supervised pilots at high school level show how to permit tools without opening the gates
Try this
Draft your school's pupil-versus-staff AI split this week, using the age-band structure as a starting point.
Paste this into your AI tool
I am the principal of a secondary school in Switzerland. Draft a two-page AI use policy that separates what pupils may do from what teachers may do. Pupils: [describe your age range and any tools already in use]. Teachers: [say what they currently use AI for, if anything]. Structure it as: purpose, what pupils may and may not use, what staff may use for planning and admin, what needs my approval, and how we review it in a year. Keep the language plain enough to send to parents. Flag any point where you are guessing rather than following what I told you.
EU AI Act disclosure duties are now enforceable
The European Union's AI Act moved into enforcement on 2 August 2026, with disclosure duties now applying to chatbots and to content produced by AI. The EU's AI Office can request information from covered companies and ask for access to their models, though it has not yet pursued anyone for misconduct. Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI and Microsoft have each described compliance steps, including watermarking generated text. Rules for high-risk uses such as education, biometrics and migration arrive only in December 2027 and August 2028.
Why it matters for you
You are in Switzerland, so the Act does not bind your school directly. The vendors selling you software are usually caught by it.
- Chatbots and AI-generated content now carry disclosure duties for companies operating in the EU
- That gives you a concrete question for every edtech supplier, rather than a vague one about safety
- Rules for education as a high-risk use only arrive in December 2027, so this is preparation, not panic
Try this
Add one AI-disclosure question to your standard supplier checklist before the next software renewal.
Paste this into your AI tool
I run a secondary school in Switzerland and buy educational software from EU and US vendors. Write six questions to send a supplier whose product contains an AI chatbot or generates content for pupils. Cover: whether they disclose AI-generated output to users, where pupil data is processed and stored, whether pupil data trains their models, what happens to data if we leave, who at their company is accountable, and what they commit to before EU high-risk rules for education take effect. Keep each question to one sentence a non-technical school administrator can ask.
Sources
Meta cancelled a restructuring that assumed AI agents could take over routine work
Meta cancelled the second wave of layoffs planned under an internal reorganisation that would have shifted much of the daily work of thousands of employees onto AI systems overseen by small expert teams. The company still cut about a tenth of its staff in May, but internal measures showed autonomous AI agents were not delivering the expected productivity, while technical and security incidents rose. Zuckerberg told staff in July that the pace of AI agent progress had been misjudged.
Why it matters for you
Staff are hearing that AI will absorb routine work. A company with far more resources than yours just tried that and stopped.
- Internal measures showed output volume rose while incidents and fix times rose alongside it
- Zuckerberg told staff the pace of agent progress had been misjudged
- Useful ammunition when a governor or parent asks why you are not moving faster
Try this
Use this at your next staff meeting to set expectations: AI assists preparation, it does not replace judgement.
Paste this into your AI tool
Write talking points for a fifteen-minute staff briefing at a secondary school on how we will and will not use AI. My position: teachers may use it to draft, plan and mark-prepare, but a person checks everything that reaches a pupil or a parent. Include one paragraph on why speed of output is not the same as quality of outcome, and three questions I should invite staff to raise. Concerns I already know about from my team: [list two or three]. Plain language, no jargon, no enthusiasm.
Sources
Only a fifth of large organisations have AI running across more than one unit
Gartner found that only 22% of large organisations have scaled AI across several business units. It surveyed more than 1,300 leaders at firms with over $50 million in revenue, between January and April. Spending plans are undented, with 85% of technology leaders raising AI budgets next year. About 11% of respondents could not say what they spent on AI in 2025. Gartner's Tina Nunno warned that weak measurement tied to business outcomes wastes resources. Firms that track returns continuously and shut down weak projects reported gains on 81% of initiatives. Popular uses such as cybersecurity, threat detection and IT service desk automation often return less. The best returns came from IT asset and cost optimisation, synthetic data generation, and automated code generation. Separate reports from Infosys and Deloitte found similar gaps in measurement and readiness.
Why it matters for you
Budget is yours to defend. This survey says most organisations cannot say what they spent on AI last year.
- The firms reporting gains were the ones tracking outcomes and closing weak projects early
- Popular uses often returned least, which argues against buying whatever is loudest at the moment
- Sets a low bar you can meet: name a cost, a measure and a stop date per tool
Try this
List every AI-touching tool the school pays for, with its annual cost and who owns it.
Paste this into your AI tool
Help me build a simple AI spend and review register for a secondary school. Tools we currently pay for or use: [list them, with rough annual cost if you know it]. For each, produce a row with: tool, annual cost, who owns it, what it is meant to improve, one measure that would show it is working, and a review date. Then tell me which rows look weakest and what single question I should ask about each. Output as a table I can put in a budget paper.
California moved to ban employers using AI to monitor staff emotions
California's legislature passed a bill that would bar employers in the state from using artificial intelligence to monitor an individual employee's emotional state or to collect data from an employee's nervous system. Broader workplace monitoring would still be allowed, including for safety, and defence, aerospace and national security work is exempt. The bill now goes to Governor Gavin Newsom, and measures he signs usually take effect on 1 January of the following year.
Why it matters for you
You employ teachers, and classroom software increasingly claims to read engagement. This draws a line worth borrowing.
- The ban covers emotional-state monitoring of individual employees, not general workplace monitoring
- Any product claiming to detect pupil or staff attention or mood belongs in the same conversation
- A one-line prohibition in your policy now saves an argument later with a keen supplier
Try this
Add a clause to your draft policy barring any tool that infers emotional state of pupils or staff.
Paste this into your AI tool
Draft a single clear paragraph for a secondary school AI policy that prohibits any software which infers, scores or reports the emotional state, attention level or engagement of pupils or staff. Include: what is prohibited, the one narrow exception if any is reasonable, who may grant it, and what a supplier must confirm in writing before we buy. Write it so a parent and a teacher both understand it on first reading.
Sources
Build this
Every week, one small thing to build with AI in something you actually care about. No work in it. Five minutes to set up, and worth keeping if it earns a second run.
The thing you have been meaning to sort out for months, decided this evening rather than reconsidered again.
Five minutes to set up
I have been postponing a decision: [name it in one line, for example which bike to buy, which course to take, where to go in October]. Ask me three questions before you answer, then give me one recommendation. Not a shortlist, not options, not "it depends". Name the single fact that would change your recommendation and tell me exactly how I check it in under ten minutes.
- Have the decision in one sentence, plus your rough budget or date, before you start.
- Answer its three questions briefly; long answers make it hedge again.
- If it gives you options anyway, reply: pick one and commit.
- Check the one fact it named, then book, buy or drop the decision for good.
Yours arrives Thursday.
This one was written for a school principal. Tell us what you do and the next one is written for you — same news, your job, once a week.