Write Your AI Policy This Summer

September will arrive with AI questions whether you're ready or not. A teacher will ask if they can use the new grading app. A parent will ask what the chatbot knows about their child. A board member will forward an article and ask "what's our policy?" Summer is when you get to answer on your schedule instead of theirs.

You don't need a 40-page document. You need one page that answers five questions.

What tools are approved? Name them. Everything else is "ask first."

What data may staff put into AI tools? Spell out the rule: no student names or identifiable information in unvetted tools, ever.

Who approves new tools? One named person, not a committee that never meets.

What do we tell families? A paragraph for the back-to-school packet, in plain language.

What happens when something goes wrong? Who gets told, who decides, who fixes it.

Write it in June. Share it in August. Enforce it kindly in September. A policy written calmly in summer beats a policy improvised during a crisis every time — and your future self, fielding that board member's email, will be grateful.

The schools that struggle with AI in the fall are the ones that spent summer hoping the questions wouldn't come. They always come. Be ready.

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