The First-Week-of-School Test for Every AI Policy

Policies written in quiet offices meet reality in September: new staff who missed the training, students testing every boundary by Friday, a parent email that starts "I read an article..." Run your AI policy through the first-week-of-school test before the first week arrives.

Can a brand-new teacher understand it in ten minutes? If it requires a training course to comprehend, it won't survive the September hiring rush. Ten sentences, plain words.

Does it answer the 9 p.m. question? A teacher alone at night wonders: "Can I paste this essay into the chatbot?" Your policy should give a yes-or-no answer a tired person can follow, not a framework to interpret.

Does it cover the tools teachers actually use? The vetted list is nice. The policy also needs a rule for everything else: the free app, the browser extension, the thing a colleague recommended at lunch.

Does it say who decides? When the new tool question comes up mid-September, one named person says yes or no. "The committee" is not an answer during a school week.

Does it tell families anything? If parents first hear about your AI practices from a news article instead of you, the policy failed its most important audience.

Five yeses and you're ready for September. Anything less is homework — and unlike your students, you still have time to finish it.

I explain frameworks; I don't give legal counsel.