BY ALBINA CEKA
The New York City Council’s Committees on Education and Oversight and Investigations dissected the new guidelines from the Department of Education called “Guidance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Screen Time” on a joint meeting Tuesday, September 15 at City Hall to discuss whether the efforts to curb the use of technology as a learning device in NYC public schools way far amount.
The joint meeting was spearheaded by Shekar Krishnan, City Council Member for District 25 in Queens serving as the chair of the Committee on Oversight and Investigations, and Eric Dinowitz, City Council Member representing District 11 in Northwest Bronx while serving as the Chair of the Committee on Education.
Krishman criticized the use of ed-tech in schools calling them “excessive and distracting students from actual learning and undermining teachers in the classrooms.” The Department of Education created a new set of guidelines, released on September second posted on the NYCPS website, to combat how much time and what tools students used for the 2026-2027 school year. 2K-8 would have a complete ban on student-facing AI, which encompasses AI tools and applications that require direct student interaction, while 9-12 will be allowed limited use to approved programs. Screen time differences between the grades with 2K-2 allowed no 1:1 screen time, 3-5 will have a recommend no more than 30 minutes of daily 1:1 screen time, 6-8 will have a recommendation of no more than 45 minutes of daily 1:1 screen time, and 9-12 will be dependent on their school. But this does not include any test prep or standardized tests within the time frame and it remains a recommendation to teachers and schools not a mandate.
Danielle Diunta, first Deputy Chancellor, agreed with Krishman noting that “If we’re going to be using digital devices technology in our classrooms, it needs to be intentional, active not passive.”
For this school year the DOE has banned Youtube from all educational devices used by students regardless if the device was on school grounds or not. Teachers will still be able to use it and will be able to share specific videos for lessons through Google Classroom. But Dinowitz wonders if the same will be done for gamified apps, apps that use game design elements but tend to fail to foster cognitive growth in students.
“These are really damaging to our kids much in the same way that social media could be — you’re always looking for the next dopamine hit, and it takes so much of the learning from these gamified apps,” said Dinowitz
Despite gamified apps having been around long since before AI there still remains no policies or guidelines considering it or any current plans by the DOE to restrict or ban them if they do not have AI reliant components.
Krishman calls the overuse of tech in school a ” pervasiveness that has survived the pandemic and it’s a problem.”
Referring to a time where Covid-19 forced public schools to shift their students to remote learning, leading the city to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on computers, iPads, and their upkeep. These devices were essential during the pandemic but now it has been over six years and schools are still showing a heavy reliance on technology raising the concerns about whether schools using these devices are doing more harm than good to the students’ learning. Leading to Governor Kathy Hochul’s recent bell-to-bell smartphone ban policy that issued a state wide that prohibits students from using internet devices, like smartphones, on K-12 school grounds for the entire school day.
The current plan is that a DOE sanctioned group will meet up after the school year is up to review and evaluate the guidelines and plans.
“What we are really eager to do is make sure we have the best policy in the country rooted in research, rooted in transparence, rooted in evidence and that we are all holding each other in accountable to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible” said Dinowitz