The city's list of restricted school AI tools is out. A Council bill to publish one every year has waited four months

Before the school year began, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the city would turn off or disable the AI features of more than 38 programs used in public schools. He did not name them. Now Chalkbeat has obtained the list, after more than a month of requests, and THE CITY published the story on Monday.

The list includes widely used reading and math curriculums, student assessment tools and a chatbot the Education Department built itself. It is not complete: officials confirmed that the tutoring platform Coursemojo and Google's Gemini chatbot are also banned for students. Amira, an AI reading tutor used in more than 200 city schools, is banned outright because officials say it cannot work without AI. Several companies told Chalkbeat their products do not use the kind of AI the policy prohibits, and some have since won approval to keep operating with features switched off.

An Education Department spokesperson, Onika Richards, said the department will "continue to evaluate the evolving AI landscape," and that parents can ask their school or community education council which tools their school uses.

For families, the list answers a basic question: which apps their children are still using in class. Until now, there was no public list.

What our records add

A bill would make a list like this public every year. Int. 959, from Council Member Eric Dinowitz, would require annual reporting on algorithmic tools approved for use in schools. A companion bill, Int. 960, would require quarterly reports on data breaches involving those tools. Int. 959 has seven Council sponsors, including Carmen N. De La Rosa, Phil Wong and Frank Morano, plus Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. Both bills were heard as preconsidered items on June 24, introduced June 30 and sent to the Education Committee. They have waited 118 days for a vote.

The June hearing raised the same questions. Opening the joint Education and Technology hearing on AI and student privacy, Dinowitz said many Council members and community education councils had called for a two-year moratorium on student-facing AI. He cited a 2026 state comptroller audit that found the department lacked a documented data classification policy and did not keep a comprehensive list of the applications each school uses.

Members asked about Amira by name. At the same hearing, Council Member Shahana K. Hanif asked whether Amira was collecting biometric data, and how students' recorded voices were stored. A department official said Amira uses student voice to give reading fluency feedback, and described the department's data processing agreements with vendors.

A state-level ban has Council support. Res. 658, from Wong with co-sponsors Alexa Avilés and Lincoln Restler, calls on Albany to pass S.10133/A.9190, which would prohibit most AI use in classrooms before high school. It was introduced Sept. 24.

The Council's separate package on AI safety in general is covered in our earlier story.

What's next

The Education Committee has 54 pending items, 36 of them older than 180 days, according to our records. No AI-in-schools bill is on an upcoming agenda. Committee meetings and agendas are posted on our meetings calendar as the Council schedules them.