Thank you so much for supporting #KeepAmityHuman! 

This is important: read this letter sent to the Board of Education by a real Amity student:

Good morning.

Ever since I attended this school, and even before I came to the high school, I have been the biggest advocate for passing the budget without amendment. When the Board of Education was getting hammered by parents over DEI relentlessly, I overcame my fears, I walked up to the podium, and I defended the school. I said Amity was my favorite place to learn, and I wouldn't want it any other way. 

This year will be the first time I'll have to campaign to vote no on a budget.

The proposed funding for AI platforms like Class Companion, SchoolAI, and Magic School AI is unacceptable. These tools are built on stolen copyrighted content, trained using books and articles downloaded from pirate libraries without author consent. OpenAI—the company behind these platforms—is a major ICE contractor, meaning our tax dollars would directly fund deportation operations. The environmental cost is staggering. AI data centers consume energy on the scale of entire nations and require millions of gallons of water daily, contradicting everything we teach students about climate responsibility. And if you read that paragraph and dismissed this letter as "probably being written by AI" because I used an em dash—you are exactly why these programs need to be defunded.

Meanwhile, we're cutting PE teachers and making reductions that actually harm student education. And for what? So we can say we have the lowest increase in the state? For what reason? I would happily pay 30 bucks more in taxes so that schools like Amity are better funded. The money earmarked for AI could easily help fund these programs instead. We could keep teachers. We could get all these electives. We could invest in people instead of algorithms.

There was outrage in the Visual Arts department last year upon learning that the Amity theater program was utilizing AI art instead of asking any of the very talented, award-winning artists that attend here. I believe this is reflective of a desire that Amity has to shift to a more AI-centric model of education. Is that the goal? Do we want to make teachers de facto behavior regulators while AI holograms start teaching our students? Where exactly is this line being drawn? Two students, one of them being a student I am very close with, came to me after I spoke at the BoE meeting in January and told me something incredibly concerning. There are case managers at Amity telling students IEPs to simplify assignments with Perplexity AI. Are we serious? Is this what we have come to? It is provable information in numerous studies that this does not help people. ChatGPT and Generative AI makes people dumber.  And we are shoving it down the throats of our most vulnerable learners. Because we fund it.

I am going to email every single day without fail until something is done. I stood up for this school when others attacked it. Now I'm asking the Board to stand up for students by rejecting AI funding and reallocating those resources to programs that actually serve us.

This student is doing what should make everyone on the Board of Education scared: they're not giving up. We need you to not give up as well. Go to keepamityhuman.org today and send the Board of Education your thoughts. Our students are counting on you.