While June, July and August are often cited as the top three reasons to become a teacher, a task force of 13 faculty members spent part of their summer vacations updating the school’s AI policy for the 2025-26 academic year.

 Created in conjunction with former Middle School (MS) and Upper School (US) English Teacher Eric Hudson and the New England AI Collaborative — a group of 16 independent schools — the AI Guidance Statement reflects the school’s attempts to grapple with the powerful generative technology. The school’s revised guidelines provide opportunities to use AI as a tool with specific guardrails.

 According to the All-School Student and Family Handbook, which was last updated prior to the 2025-26 academic year, “Students may never use AI to generate work and submit it as their own.” Students may use AI as a tool (e.g. idea generation, study support) only with explicit teacher permission, and AI use must be disclosed and cited based on teacher guidance, according to the Handbook.

 US Dean of Teaching and Learning and task force member Michael Chapman said the revised Handbook offers more guidance on AI usage.

 “The big emphasis that the Handbook places is on our continued AI work in our mission and values and that you must be given explicit permission from the teacher to utilize AI for whatever the task is with necessary citation.”

 Chief Learning Officer Jed Lippard led the task force that updated the school’s AI policy.

 “Our goal is to prioritize an educative, rather than a punitive, stance,” he said. “As a college preparatory school, we want to preserve BB&N’s longstanding commitments to academic excellence and integrity while acknowledging that these emerging technologies do impact the development of the mind.”

 Mr. Hudson, the school’s new visiting innovator, taught at the school from 2006 to 2013. After leaving, he joined Global Online Academy and became its chief program officer. Currently, he advises schools on how to incorporate technology into their teaching.

 “My goal is to make generative AI more of an open conversation at school,” he said. “I want both teachers and students to feel comfortable using AI, knowing about AI and thinking about AI so they can talk about it.”

 During the 2025-26 academic year, the New England AI Collaborative plans to meet in person three times and participate in monthly Zoom sessions.

 “The idea is that each of these schools is going to learn more about AI but also work on a project that’s going to help their school move forward on AI,” Mr. Hudson said. “Because it’s multiple schools, we’re going to be able to do this in a collaborative way that’s going to help different schools share information, insights and questions so they can move more quickly than if they were just working alone.”

 For MS Librarian and task force member Christina Dominique-Pierre, updating the school’s AI policy was a “no-brainer.”

 “Before, because no one really knew what AI meant for education, decisions were made mainly out of attempting to protect issues around academic integrity,” she said. “By only focusing on that area, there was definitely this knee-jerk reaction of saying, ‘Nope, it’s not allowed in any capacity,’ and this year, what we’ve done was really look intentionally at what our values are and what our mission is.”

 The school’s previous AI policy left students feeling like they couldn’t be trusted, Ms. Pierre said.

 “What went into updating the policy was really understanding our own commitment to creating a space where students can feel trusted, students can feel brave and students can feel a sense of belonging and connection. In order for that to be real, they have to feel like they can be trusted with their own academics and making decisions around that.”

 Last year’s AI expectations lacked clarity, James Ferreira ’26 said.

 “My biggest question is about overall policy. Usually, the topic gets touched on briefly in some classes at the beginning of the year, but I never really see a clear-cut policy and am often left with questions about what the rules actually are.”

 The school’s new AI policy will be helpful, Sally Hoagland ’27 said.

 “Students don’t know where the line is, and when they cross it, sometimes it’s too late, but setting that up or telling everyone beforehand or just having everyone on the same page in all classes about AI is really useful.”