Vermont’s Agency of Education advises schools to keep ChatGPT-style chatbots away from students through eighth grade. But the agency can’t tell parents which schools have turned on Google’s Gemini chatbot for students, because it doesn’t collect that information.
The state leaves those decisions to local school systems, and says that’s deliberate: AI changes too fast for fixed rules. In the agency’s latest published survey, covering the 2023–24 school year, fewer than one in 10 school systems had issued any AI policy or notice. The state hasn’t yet published more recent results.
That puts Vermont somewhere between Boston, which is teaching AI in every high school, and New York City and Los Angeles, which restricted student use this fall.
At the bottom: how to find your school district’s AI rules, and four questions to ask your child’s school about Gemini and student data.
What the state recommends
The agency released 50 pages of AI guidance in January. Its own website says plainly that the guidance is not a mandate. The guidance is about generative AI: programs that write text, answer questions and carry on a conversation.
By grade, it recommends:
Pre-K through grade 2: students should not use AI chatbots at all.
Grades 3 to 5: no open-ended chatbots. AI is OK only when it’s built into a learning program and limited to that lesson.
Grades 6 to 8: students can use chatbots designed for schools, under a teacher’s direction, but not general-purpose chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini.
Grades 9 to 12: students can start using AI for research and schoolwork. Schools should pilot it first, paired with lessons on how AI works and where it goes wrong.
Education Secretary Zoie Saunders said the tools are already in Vermont classrooms. “It is our responsibility to help educators and students use these tools with intention and confidence,” she said.
Why the state chose guidance over rules
The agency’s argument is that AI is moving faster than rules can. “Since AI is a rapidly evolving technology, it is best addressed through guidance that can remain flexible and adapt as the technology changes,” Lindsey Hedges, a policy communications specialist for the agency, said in an email to Compass. “Once something is placed into formal policy, we lose the ability to update or refine it quickly in response to new developments.”
The guidance makes the local case too. It tells school systems to adapt its grade-by-grade timeline to their own students, and says each school’s readiness will be different. It recommends piloting AI with a few classes before any larger rollout.
The other side of that choice is that protections vary from one school system to the next:
In the state’s latest survey, 16 of Vermont’s 54 school systems, about three in 10, didn’t require the software companies they work with to sign student data privacy agreements.
The state doesn’t know which school systems let students use Gemini.
Gemini is built into the tools schools already use
Every Vermont school system uses Google’s education software, according to the state’s guidance. Google offers Gemini to schools at no cost.
In August, just before the school year started, Google opened Gemini inside Google Classroom to students of all ages, including elementary students. Students can turn their class materials into flashcards, practice quizzes and study guides.
Google says the Classroom setting is on by default.
Students only get it if their district has also turned on Google’s Gemini chatbot or its Notebook study tool for them.
Districts can switch it off for students under 18.
Asked which school systems allow students to use Gemini, and at what grades, the agency told Compass: “We do not collect this level of specificity.”
The state’s guidance also flagged a monitoring gap. As of its release in January, it said, teachers couldn’t see all of their students’ Gemini conversations. Only a district’s Google administrator could review records, and Gemini used inside Docs and other Google apps wasn’t logged at all.
Google says Gemini chats on school accounts aren’t read by human reviewers or used to train its AI.
Los Angeles, the country’s second-largest school system, switched off Gemini features on student accounts and school devices this year. That includes Gemini itself, the AI mode in Google Search, and the AI assistants inside Classroom and Docs.
What Vermont school systems have done
The state’s 2024 Annual Technology Survey is the latest published count. It covers the 2023–24 school year, two years before the state’s guidance, and all 54 of Vermont’s supervisory unions and school districts, the local school systems that run Vermont’s public schools. Results from the 2025 survey aren’t out yet; the agency said it usually has them by winter.
About 5 of the 54 school systems (9%) had released any policy or notice on AI.
5 had banned AI programs on school devices; 38 had not.
47 described their approach as cautious.
40 said they were concerned about students using AI to cheat.
34 said individual teachers were already using AI in instruction.
School systems told the agency they wanted state guidance on AI. The January guidance was the response.
That guidance points to Champlain Valley, Essex Westford and Missisquoi Valley as examples of school systems that have written AI principles. It also highlights a menu Lamoille South built to show teachers which student uses are allowed on which assignments.
Three big cities, three answers
Boston is teaching AI. The city and a $1 million gift from Kayak co-founder Paul English are paying for AI lessons in every high school. Twenty-five teachers trained this summer to lead it. “Every single BPS graduate will have fluency,” Mayor Michelle Wu said.
New York City imposed a one-year ban on student-facing AI from pre-K through eighth grade, about 600,000 children. Companion chatbots, apps built to act like a friend, are banned in every grade. High schoolers take two short AI lessons a year. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the tech industry wants people to believe AI-powered early education is inevitable. “We do not see it that way,” he said.
Los Angeles blocked student AI on school devices and accounts in every grade while a committee writes permanent rules. The block doesn’t reach students’ personal devices.
What Montpelier might do
Vermont has turned school technology guidance into law once already. In 2023–24, fewer than half of Vermont schools had a cellphone policy. Lawmakers then passed Act 72 of 2025.
Starting this school year, every school board must adopt a cellphone policy at least as strict as the state’s model. Any board that doesn’t is presumed to have adopted the model.
Two bills this year went after classroom technology more broadly:
H.650, from Reps. Angela Arsenault, D-Williston, and Edye Graning, D-Jericho, would require education software companies to register with the state and have their products checked for effectiveness before schools can use them.
Graning said there is “very little independent oversight” of whether these products do what they claim.
The bill passed the House and cleared the Senate Education Committee in May. It was still in the Senate Finance Committee when the session ended.
The Agency of Education said it agreed with the bill’s goal, but that whether products work and whether student data is protected “require different solutions.”
H.830, from Arsenault, would let parents opt their children out of school technology.
“No one was ever made to prove that using technology the way we are in education currently was the right thing for kids,” Arsenault told the House Education Committee, VTDigger reported.
H.830 missed the Legislature’s deadline for bills to move between chambers.
Senate Education Chair Seth Bongartz, D-Bennington, told Kids VT his committee will likely take up AI next session. He’d like the agency to write a model AI policy that local schools can adapt.
Asked whether one is in the works, the agency pointed to its guidance, which it says can be updated as the technology changes. It did not say it plans to issue a model policy.
Bongartz isn’t looking for a ban. “I don’t think that I’m prepared to just have a blanket prohibition,” he said.
Check Your School’s AI Rules
Whether AI belongs in your child’s classroom is a call families and school boards will keep making. Here’s how to find out what your school has already decided, so you can make up your own mind.
Find your district’s policy. Look on your school district’s website or in its school board policy manual for “artificial intelligence” or “AI.” If you can’t find one, there may not be one yet.
Read the state’s recommendations. The Vermont AI Guidance for Education sets out the grade-by-grade line on page 8.
Ask your child’s school four questions. The state doesn’t collect this information, so your school is the place to ask:
Can my child use Gemini on a school Google account, including the Gemini tab in Google Classroom, and starting in what grade?
Which other AI programs are approved for students?
For AI programs other than Google’s, has the district signed an agreement that bars the company from using my child’s schoolwork to train its AI? Google’s terms for school accounts already say it doesn’t.
How will teachers tell students when AI is allowed on an assignment, and when it isn’t?
If you want to go further, school board meetings are where these policies get adopted. The state’s education technology contact is Josh Blumberg, josh.blumberg@vermont.gov.