t the start of the school year, Anne Coburn’s daughter Zora came home from school and told her about an assignment she had in class: design a mascot to go on the classroom door.

But after Zora, a student at Cambridge’s Putnam Avenue Upper School, finished her drawing, her teacher prompted an AI tool to create a mascot as well. And then the class voted between the two.

“The teacher and/or students chose to go with an AI design of a mascot as opposed to Zora’s drawing. And then, one of the kids — after this was chosen — saw Zora’s drawing and said, ‘Oh, it’s almost as good as AI,’” Coburn recalls.

At the moment, Cambridge Public Schools does not have a district-wide policy on the use of AI in classrooms. In early 2025, the district issued guidance in the form of a two-page document asking teachers to “develop and communicate a clear academic policy” for the use of AI in their classrooms. It also prompted them to integrate AI into their teaching as they saw fit. Several months later, the Cambridge School Committee asked Superintendent David G. Murphy to “develop and present a formal districtwide plan on the use of AI,” emphasizing that a policy should not come at the expense of “core skills and knowledge” but help students navigate a “rapidly changing world.” Murphy’s proposal is set to be unveiled at a School Committee meeting in mid-May.

But while the district lacks a clear policy, teachers, students and parents say that AI use remains ambiguous and divisive.

In a statement to The Crimson, CPS spokesperson Jaclyn Piques wrote that “CPS issued guidelines/guidance around use of Generative AI, as early as the 2024-25 school year,” referencing the two-page document disseminated in January. “Generally, we want to have guidelines that safeguard the use of this type of technology for both students and staff.”

‘A Gray Area’

Coburn and her daughter talk a lot about AI. Both are creatives concerned about AI’s influence on art and education.

Zora, says Coburn, despises AI. But at the same time, in the classroom, she relies on it.

The 12-year-old has dyslexia and, according to Coburn, often requires predictive text — an AI-based tool that suggests words and phrases as you type — to be able to write.

Coburn says that to figure out how students should use AI, we have to ask more specific questions. “In what context should students use it? In what format should students use it, or what subjects should students use it?” she asks.

Sarah B. Rosenberg, an instructional technology specialist, teaches digital literacy classes to elementary-age students at Cambridgeport School and Graham and Parks Elementary School. In 2022, when she and other members of the district’s’ Information, Communications, and Technology department agreed that AI was “something that needs to be taught,” Rosenberg began to incorporate AI literacy into her curriculum — starting as early as kindergarten.

“We teach algorithmic thinking in grades K through two, where we start with really basic, ‘what is an algorithm and how computers think?’” she says.

For her older students, Rosenberg focuses on some of the challenges and ethical concerns related to AI usage. For instance, the Google Gemini-powered “AI Overview” that appears in internet searches has complicated how students learn to cite sources. “We talk about how AI pulls from all over the internet and how it’s impossible to cite an AI source,” she says.

Although most AI platforms are restricted on district-issued Chromebooks, Gemini is enabled for high school students.

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Jaclyn Piques said that their decision to allow Gemini access was based on student “equity.”

“AI is freely available in multiple forms to students who have their own devices, subscriptions, etc., but not all students have such resources available to them. Thus, we chose to enable Gemini only for high school students for school-owned Chromebooks,” the spokesperson wrote.

Some Cambridge students, however, have been explicitly encouraged to use Gemini in their coursework. Rosalind “Roz” Patterson, a senior at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, says that before a major project, her class was shown how to use AI to begin their research. While it was made clear that the writing itself could not be generated by AI, her teacher instructed students to use Gemini to develop research questions, find sources, and create an annotated bibliography.

Patterson says that aside from her teacher’s guidance, Gemini did not come with clear direction from the district on what constitutes an appropriate use, describing it as part of the “gray area” surrounding AI usage in CPS.

Elijah “Eli” Bartholomew, another senior at CRLS, also says that AI usage remains a case-by-case, classroom-by-classroom issue.

“I feel like this year and last year in particular, it’s all very up in the air. It’s all very open-ended. I feel like every teacher does something different,” Bartholomew says, noting that while some teachers embrace the tool, others remain completely opposed to it.

Patterson believes that “minimum AI usage” would be the best approach for the district, but she acknowledges that the technology can also improve efficiency, pointing to her experience as a teaching assistant last semester for an Advanced Placement course. The class teacher asked her to create 40 AP-style multiple choice questions using AI so students could practice course content.

“It was kind of a quantity over quality scenario,” says Patterson, adding that she felt this task was an “appropriate scenario.”

But in other scenarios, the prevalence of AI is more troubling. Patterson says one of her friends has a computer science teacher who uses AI to create assignments — and then students use AI to complete them.

“When it just becomes a robot talking to a robot,” says Patterson, “I think it gets to a point.”

What Comes Next

The August move to create a district-wide policy was backed by the School Committee’s two sitting incumbents — Richard Harding Jr. and Elizabeth C.P. Hudson.

Hudson says she’s heard from both concerned students and parents, who worry that teachers are using AI to create class materials without checking for significant content errors. She believes that the district needs to rapidly roll out a policy on the use of AI. She hopes such a policy will “safeguard basic, foundational skills” while shifting the district’s focus toward building the math skills that underlie machine learning systems and identifying ways to use AI to address achievement gaps in Cambridge schools.

Cambridge Schools have faced a racial achievement gap for at least a decade. The most recent Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam scores showed a 49 percentage point gap between black and white students in both English Language Arts and Math.

Hudson notes that these gaps persist despite increased teacher hiring and overall spending. Currently, Cambridge is the sixth highest spending school district in the state, spending nearly $40,000 per pupil. She says she is interested in seeing how AI might assist teachers and the district in closing these gaps.

Rosenberg — who serves as the vice president of community relations for the Cambridge Education Association — hopes that the superintendent’s proposal next month will “respect” the fact that some teachers aren’t as comfortable with using AI in the classroom.

“I think the general consensus is that we want to be consulted. We want to be considered the experts in our classroom. And, you know, we want to have a say in how this goes,” Rosenberg says.

Arjun Jaikumar, another member of the School Committee, says that he is carefully weighing the pros and cons of AI. He sees it benefiting students in learning, educators in teaching, and administrators in completing everyday logistics and identifying at-risk students. But he has concerns about academic integrity, and carries some skepticism that technology companies may get outsized influence in education.

“AI solutions in education — everywhere to some extent — they’re being sold to you. They’re a product. They are products that are being made by companies with billions of dollars of investment, because they see billions of dollars for profit,” says Jaikumar, though he frames this as something to be aware of rather than something inherently negative.

“I think I’m pretty middle of the road on this stuff,” Jaikumar says. “I just want to be open to opportunities as well as fully thinking about concerns.”

For now, Jaikumar is waiting for the School Committee meeting next month to learn more about the district’s proposal. His hope, though, is that the dialogue will continue, as people on both sides care very much about AI and its implementation. He says the meeting will be consequential beyond just Cambridge. “We’ll be a model if our kids thrive, and we won’t be if they don’t. Or if we make the wrong choices.”

— Magazine writer Charan S. Bala can be reached at [email protected].

— Magazine writer Jack B. Reardon can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @JackBReardon