Neighbor News
Amity Students Write Open Letter, Challenge Board Over AI Grading Platforms
A student campaign called Keep Amity Human has organized for sixteen consecutive days, gathering over 150 petition signatures.
WOODBRIDGE, CT — A student-led campaign at Amity Regional High School has spent the past sixteen days demanding that the Amity Regional Board of Education vote against continued funding for AI grading platforms in the upcoming school budget. The group, operating under the name Keep Amity Human, has sent a daily email to every member of the Board since February 10th, filed a Freedom of Information request with the district, launched a petition that has now surpassed 150 signatures, and built a public website at keepamityhuman.org that lets community members track individual Board members’ voting records.
The campaign’s objections cover a range of concerns, including documented grading errors, research-backed evidence of racial bias in AI scoring systems, data privacy practices that allow student work to be used for commercial product development, and what the students describe as a significant transparency failure in how the district has disclosed its AI spending to the public.
The campaign’s most concrete evidence came from a Freedom of Information request filed with the district. The records show that Amity Regional School District No. 5 spent $19,216.51 on AI platforms during the 2025–2026 school year across five separate products. The district’s own budget documentation, and a February 24th statement published in the student government newsletter, cited only $11,000 for Magic School AI.
The four products not mentioned in official communications include a ChatGPT Team subscription of $6,061.95 paid directly to OpenAI in July 2025, a six-seat expansion of that same contract for $1,354.58 purchased in October 2025, a Snorkl AI subscription for $500 purchased in November 2025, and two Diffit subscriptions totaling $299.98 routed through Staff Development rather than the Technology budget. All five purchases were signed by the Director of Finance and the Superintendent of Schools. The full documentation is published at keepamityhuman.org/foia.html.
The students noted that the student government newsletter addressed their campaign’s specific concerns about AI spending on the same day the FOI records came back, and that the newsletter’s figures were $8,216.51 short of what the district actually spent. “We think the community deserves to know this happened,” the group wrote in their open letter to the Board.
Keep Amity Human launched on February 10th with a single daily email to Board members. By Day 11, the Instagram account had grown to over 200 followers. The petition surpassed 140 signatures within two weeks. The campaign’s website includes a “Track Your Rep” tool showing individual Board members’ voting records, which displays members’ photos in grayscale on red until they publicly pledge to vote no on AI grading platform funding.
The full open letter is available here.
