De La Rosa on approved AI products, parent FOIL requests, and vendor transparency
De La Rosa raises concerns that DOE has declined to provide parents comprehensive lists of approved AI products. Junta says DOE is working with superintendents to gather information on what tools are in schools and encourages parents to ask their schools. De La Rosa asks about contract registration through Checkbook NYC.
So parents have asked about approved AI products that are currently being used in the schools.
It is my understanding that the DOE has declined to provide some of that information.
And that some parents were asking, have parents done FOIL requests for that information?
And why is there hesitancy around sort of providing comprehensive lists?
Thank you for that question.
We are currently working as part of our next phase.
We're currently working with our superintendents and principals to have more of exactly what you just said, which is we need to understand everything that's in our schools,
how they're being used, especially what the top ones are, which ones might be leading to some impact that's interesting, because it is also new.
And we do want to encourage schools to innovate and then scale, you know, what's working.
With that said, we're currently engaging in that process.
But I would say as a former principal that any tool that I'm using, any curriculum I'm using in my school, a parent has a right to ask and deserves to be answered.
So in cases where parents might have a question about what, you know, my child uses X, you know, I didn't mean Twitter X, like insert any example, you know, can you talk to me a little bit?
little bit about how it's used, how long they use it, you know, are they using it alongside a teacher?
Those are amazing questions for our parents to be asking.
We encourage them to do so and we expect our teachers, our leaders, our superintendents, and ourselves to be able to answer those questions, especially if we've adopted them so locally.