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Called the National AI Safety & Privacy Standard, the agreement was announced in New York on September 9 by Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten and United Federation of Teachers (UFT) President Michael Mulgrew. The standard lists 10 enforceable protections. It must report data breaches within 72 hours, fix security flaws within a set deadline and clear annual certification and audits. He added that the terms will cover every district Microsoft works with from November 1. Mamdani announced the one-year moratorium on September 2 with Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels. It covers nearly 600,000 students up to eighth grade, while companion chatbots and mainstream tools such as ChatGPT and Claude are blocked in every grade. High schoolers get five AI pilots and two mandatory 45-minute AI literacy modules.
A week after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani banned AI for public school students up to eighth grade, Microsoft has signed a legally binding AI privacy agreement with two of the largest teachers unions in the US. On the same day, district officials revealed a moratorium barring students in all grades from using generative AI on district devices this school year.
“It is 30 pages, but in some ways it comes down to three words: privacy, safety, and transparency,” Smith said. Under the deal, the company cannot use student or teacher data to train its AI models, cannot track students, and cannot let AI make high-risk decisions without a human reviewing them. School districts can write the terms straight into their Microsoft contracts. If the company breaks them, districts can end the contract and seek damages. Microsoft cannot sell student data or use it for ads, must limit how much data it collects, and has to explain in plain language how its tools work. Districts can also add them to new or existing contracts without renegotiating the full deal. Teachers can use AI to plan lessons but not to grade. Los Angeles Unified has gone a step further. The disclosure surprised board members at the first meeting of a committee on AI in schools, since senior administrators had imposed it on their own after the board’s June vote to restrict screen time. Google’s AI Mode has also been switched off on student accounts.