Published August 24, 2026 · yesterdayProduct3 min read

Cheshire Academy's AI rule is three colours, and the teacher who wrote the task picks

A Connecticut school of about 400 students sets AI permission assignment by assignment. The bill for that lands on whoever designed the assignment.

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What happened

Cheshire Academy labels each assignment green, yellow or red for AI permission, with yellow letting the teacher allow some tools and forbid others.
The school does not require teachers to use AI at all; its librarian and technology coordinator says the vast majority use it in some form.
On consultants' advice, staff training covered general technique and the technology's limits rather than prescribing particular software.
The colour scheme followed the academy adopting reflection methods introduced by French teacher Miriam Przybyla-Baum.
A pilot Student AI Council has students making media and leading discussions on healthy AI use.

decisionA yellow assignment forces its author to enumerate permitted tools before the task is issued, so the AI question is answered by the person testing the skill rather than by a policy committee.

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[1]
Cheshire Academy is a private boarding and day school in Connecticut with about 400 students in grades 9 through 12.
ReportedView cited source
[2]
Assignments at Cheshire Academy are labelled like traffic lights: green means AI is fully allowed, red bans any AI use, and yellow lets the teacher permit some tools while banning the rest, such as allowing spell-check but not messaging a chatbot.
ReportedView cited source
[3]
Administrators at Cheshire Academy do not force instructors to use AI, though the school's librarian and technology coordinator George Aiello claims the vast majority of instructors use it in some way.
ReportedView cited source
[4]
On the advice of consultants, the school trained its staff on general techniques for using AI, including how to craft prompts and the technology's limits such as incorrect and biased responses, instead of prescribing certain tech.
ReportedView cited source
[5]
Educators at the school use a patchwork of programs including general-purpose chatbots ChatGPT and Perplexity as well as MagicSchool, an AI platform built for educators.
ReportedView cited source
[6]
Teachers there often use generative AI to prepare class materials, asking the AI of their choice for help planning lessons or creating grading rubrics.
ReportedView cited source

As of 2026-08-24

The reporting this story was synthesized from, earliest first. Every link goes to the original.