Ohio school districts are being forced to confront artificial intellgence policy as a result of House Bill 96, the state’s 2026-2027 state budget. It requires school districts to create a policy on the use of AI by July 1 of this year. The budget also required the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to create a model policy that school districts could use. The Department of Education’s model policy is
misguided, and since the School Board isn’t required to adopt it, they shouldn’t.
The Board of Education has a lot of freedom in drafting its AI policy, which it should use wisely. More importantly, it should include students and teachers at every step of the writing and decision making process, as they will be most affected by the finished product.
Under “Academic Integrity,” the Department of Education’s model policy says, “AI-enabled tools may be used to support student work (such as brainstorming or feedback), but AI-generated work must not
replace student work.” Advocates of AI integration in the classroom argue students will fall behind without the use of AI in school because they will eventually be forced to use it in their professional lives. Rather, the opposite is true: students will fall behind because of AI.
As children are encouraged to use generative AI to come up with ideas and organize their thoughts, they will lose critical thinking skills and their writing will suffer. A study published in Computers in Human Behavior found that although students using AI to complete research found the task easier, they reported lower mental effort, and their analyses were less thorough than those of students who did not use AI.
What is most valuable in the workforce are skills that AI can perform for students in school and that students will lose as a result of the overuse of AI, like research and note-taking. Students could lose the ability to judge or reason if they rely on AI. School leadership has a responsibility to prepare students for their future, and encouraging them to use AI is irresponsible; it will do the opposite.
Furthermore, students do not need to be taught how to use generative AI. It is extremely intuitive. High school teachers do not teach students how to use their phones, computers or Instagram, so why should they teach students how to use AI?
The environmental impact of AI is unjustifiable. According to MIT News, generative AI uses mass amounts of electricity as it is trained and as people use it. Because AI requires advanced computing hardware, there is additional environmental impact from its production and delivery. Also, a significant amount of water is used to cool the hardware that runs AI, which affects municipal water supplies.
The Board of Education, in their creation of AI policy, has an opportunity to prevent, at least to a certain extent, further destruction of the environment. A policy supporting AI usage would unnecessarily put students’ futures at risk by supporting the destruction of valuable natural resources and creating students who will ignore ethical questions when considering using AI.
The School Board has an obligation to students to draft a policy that will best serve them. Students are dependent on the district to make thoughtful decisions. It is the Board’s responsibility to consider the negative impact AI will have on students’ education and cognitive development and act accordingly. It is important that the Board consider these factors and the opinions of students as they draft the policy that will affect students and educators as early as next school year.
Published and digitized February 2026.
