FCPS has joined a pilot for “ChatGPT for Teachers” without public explanation, safety review, or parental consent. OpenAI’s tools carry documented risks for children, teachers, and student data. We are asking the School Board to pause the rollout, engage families, and establish safeguards before proceeding.

We, the undersigned parents and community members, are writing to express our urgent concern regarding the premature and unrestricted use of generative artificial intelligence tools in our children's education, particularly through the county’s participation in the first cohort of the new ChatGPT for Teachers initiative. With this hasty embrace of ChatGPT for Teachers, FCPS is taking on exceptionally high and unnecessary risk to our teachers’ professional skill development and expertise with resulting harms that fall disproportionately on our children, without their awareness or consent. Adopting generative AI in classrooms is an untested experiment. No experiment involving teachers and children should move forward without rigorous evidence, strict safeguards, and a commitment to minimizing harm.

Our Concerns
There are documented risks of generative AI directly relevant to FCPS students:

• Misinformation: AI tools can generate inaccurate or fabricated content that teachers may unknowingly pass to students. Error rates can be high, and young children are not equipped to judge accuracy, making it easy for false information to shape foundational knowledge.
• Bias and inequity: When used in differentiation, AI may inaccurately influence which students are given enriched or adapted materials, determining access in ways that unintentionally reinforce inequities.  
• Inappropriate advice: AI can produce content that offers unsuitable advice on behavior or sensitive situations.
• Privacy risk: Generative AI can expose new privacy vulnerabilities when teachers input student work or sensitive context into the system, which can include semi-identifiable details that may be stored, logged, or used to further train AI models. OpenAI has provided vague claims on protecting student data and has not openly detailed how student data will be used. Families have the legal right to complete clarity about what data is collected, how it is used, and what safeguards exist.

Our Requests
Our children deserve an education that prioritizes their cognitive growth, critical thinking abilities, and foundational learning over the implementation of unproven technological tools. All teaching should be within a “human-first” framework, ensuring teachers retain full authorship over instructional decisions and relationships with students. We call upon the Fairfax County School Board to take immediate action to protect our children's cognitive development and educational experience by implementing the following measures:

• Immediately pause the ChatGPT for Teachers pilot and issue a temporary moratorium across all FCPS schools. Engage with concerned families openly before any future implementation.
• Establish an FCPS technology advisory committee including child-development experts, educators, data-privacy researchers, AI-risk experts, and teacher, community and parent representatives to evaluate both existing and prospective technology tools, including independently determining educational value and risks of tools. This committee will create a proposal with appropriate safeguards to proceed with the ChatGPT for Teachers pilot.
• Establish these minimum safeguards to responsibly pilot Chat GPT for Teachers in our schools. These safeguards must be created in detail before any deployment resumes. 

1. 1. Provide mandatory teacher training on appropriate use, verification practices, known limitations, and bias awareness. Set clear boundaries on how these tools can and cannot be used, especially regarding lesson content, behavioral guidance, and any interaction involving vulnerable student groups.
   2. Develop data protection rules with parent-visible documentation detailing what data stays local, what is discarded, how and when student information is shared and/or used by OpenAI, between teachers or schools, and how data is protected at all levels of the system. Require transparent reporting from any AI vendor, including known failure modes, safety limitations, and detailed data policies.
   3. Require explicit and informed parental consent, and prioritize parent transparency so families understand how the tool is being used and can opt in or out without penalty.
   4. Implement independent auditing throughout the pilot by educators, researchers, and child-safety experts, not solely by the organizations involved in the pilot.
   5. Create clear accountability channels so families can report harms or request reviews when AI-assisted decisions affect their children.

• Maintain the FCPS technology advisory committee as an ongoing presence whose role will be to receive information from accountability channels and provide oversight regarding safety and utility of AI program and meet quarterly.

Respectfully,
Concerned Parents & Community Members of Fairfax County