- On July 27, 2026, NYSUT sent an open letter to state education officials demanding enforceable restrictions on humanoid AI in schools, triggered by the Salamanca City School District’s voluntary pause of its $57,000 deployment of “Sally,” a lifelike robot from Realbotix.
- A May 2026 NYSUT resolution already bans student-facing AI for pre-K through second grade, non-educational AI for grades 3-8, and “social companion” chatbots for children under 16, but none of those provisions carry the force of state law.
- NYSUT President Melinda Person has demanded public, written answers from state officials before any further humanoid robot deployments proceed, warning that the current regulatory gap leaves students as “test cases for machines built to befriend children.”
New York has no law governing humanoid robots in schools. That gap became visible in the spring of 2026, when the Salamanca City School District quietly purchased a $57,000 silicone-skinned robot named “Sally” for use in high school coding classes, and just as quietly paused the deployment after media attention and parent concerns, with no state regulator intervening. NYSUT used that pause as the opening for a broader push: an open letter, sent July 27, 2026, demanding enforceable statewide restrictions before any similar deployment moves forward.
The Salamanca Case
Salamanca purchased “Sally” from Realbotix with the intention of deploying it as a teaching assistant in 11th and 12th-grade coding, robotics and AI classes. District officials were careful to frame the robot as complementary to, not a replacement for, human instruction. According to the district, “Sally” operates on a closed system loaded with pre-approved curriculum and local history, cannot search the internet, and is not designed to collect personally identifiable information or record audio or video. Officials stated the robot would “never replace teachers, staff members, or meaningful human interaction.”
NYSUT President Melinda Person was less measured. Person stated publicly that “a robot built by a company associated with sex dolls has no business in our classrooms,” arguing that students need real relationships with caring adults, relationships no robot, regardless of how lifelike its appearance, can replicate. The gap between those two positions, a district citing technical safeguards, a union citing human values, is where the policy question actually sits.
What made the Salamanca pause significant was its mechanism. No regulator ordered it. No law required it. The district acted voluntarily, under public pressure. Realbotix had reportedly described Salamanca as its “flagship deployment” and indicated plans for further classroom robots. Without a state-level requirement, the next district to purchase a humanoid robot faces the same unresolved questions with no obligation to stop.
What NYSUT’s Resolution Actually Says
NYSUT’s July letter did not come from nowhere. In May 2026, the union’s 82-member board of directors passed a resolution on educational technology that set out specific age-based limits. For pre-kindergarten through second grade, the resolution calls for banning student-facing AI outright, with exceptions for documented special needs such as translation services. For grades three through eight, non-educational AI use would be prohibited. For all children under 16, the resolution calls for banning “social companion” chatbots, programs designed to simulate human relationships.
Any AI used in classrooms, under the resolution’s terms, must be supervised, educator-led and oriented toward critical thinking and digital literacy rather than replacing human instruction. The July letter builds on that foundation, asking state officials to answer, publicly and in writing, a set of specific questions about humanoid robot deployments before any further systems are introduced into New York classrooms.
The critical distinction is legal force. The May resolution represents union policy; it binds NYSUT’s own advocacy, not school districts. Only state action, from the Education Commissioner, the Board of Regents or the legislature, would make any of those restrictions enforceable. The letter is addressed to State Education Commissioner Betty A. Rosa, Board of Regents Chancellor Lester W. Young Jr. and Governor Kathy Hochul, making that demand explicit.
A Wider Policy Gap
New York is not alone in lacking humanoid robot policy for schools. The American Federation of Teachers NYSUT’s parent union, has introduced a 10-point framework for public education in the AI era, built around a “devices-down, eyes-up, hands-on” approach. The US Surgeon General has separately raised concerns about excessive screen exposure and its effects on children’s development and mental health, adding a public health dimension to what is, for now, primarily a policy debate.
NYSUT plans to host a conference in September 2026 titled “Unplugged: Reclaiming Human-Centered Education,” intended to bring together stakeholders to examine evidence on technology’s role in learning. How widely other states are watching the New York situation is difficult to assess from public material, but the combination of a named commercial product, a voluntary district pause and a union escalation to state officials gives the dispute a concrete shape that more abstract AI-in-education debates have lacked. The Salamanca case is, for the moment, the clearest illustration of what happens when procurement moves faster than policy, and what it takes to slow it down.
