By: Sarah Wright | Troy Times | Published February 12, 2026
TROY — A student from International Academy East has come up with his own proposal for the safe and ethical use of artificial intelligence in schools.
Rohan Nagaram began crafting the policy-style memo after noticing the different approaches that educators were taking when it came to AI use in the classroom.
“They vary widely across classrooms and schools. Some teachers allow for certain uses and others don’t. Oftentimes, students such as myself are unsure and left guessing when it comes to where the line is,” Nagaram said. “I wrote this memo as an attempt to (resolve) that confusion.”
In Nagaram’s memo, “A Student Proposal for Baseline Guardrails on AI Use in Michigan K–12 Schools,” Nagaram noted that AI use is already present among staff and students.
Students have used AI systems to study by asking for explanations, going through problem-solving steps, summarizing readings, or generating practice questions. Teachers have used AI to draft lesson plans, generate examples, adapt materials for different levels, or manage routine administrative tasks.
“Unfortunately, students sometimes abuse the power of AI, and they use it to cheat on assignments or to do assignments for them. But ultimately, this (document) is not about that, because schools and teachers themselves are using AI for creating lesson plans or helping them with the other workloads,” Nagaram said. “This is mainly about transparency. It’s not about banning or pushing AI tools.”
Some of the challenges noted in Nagaram’s memo include inconsistency in classroom use, where some classes allow AI use as a study tool while others treat it as academic misconduct; overreliance on AI, as some students take answers they receive from AI at face value, even though it could be incorrect or missing context; privacy concerns, as students may not know what happens to the information they put into AI tools; and accountability, since without disclosing the use of AI, it can be difficult to determine responsibility for mistakes.
“AI can be a valuable support tool in education, but there are areas where its role should remain clearly secondary,” Nagaram said in his memo. “Decisions related to grading, academic placement, discipline, or student recommendations depend on context, intent, and individual circumstances that AI systems do not fully understand.
“From a student perspective, uncertainty in these areas is especially concerning,” he said. “When AI plays an unclear role in high-stakes decisions, students may feel that outcomes are automated or unaccountable, even if human judgment is involved behind the scenes. This perception alone can undermine confidence in the fairness of the process.”
Nagaram proposed the following guardrails as a minimum, non-prescriptive set of standards that could be adopted by the district or state:
• Any academic or administrative decision that directly affects a student should include meaningful human review with educators or administrators when AI tools are used in the process. This can apply to grading, written feedback, academic placement and recommendations.
• School districts and individual schools should disclose when AI tools are used in grading, feedback, placement recommendations, or instructional material generation.
• Districts should provide clear, accessible guidance that explains acceptable AI use for learning and studying and misuse of AI in assignments and assessments.
• Caution should be exercised when adopting AI-enabled tools that hold onto student data or that lack transparency about data handling.
• Districts should look for clear explanations of how AI tools function, what role they play in decision-making, and how student data is protected when working with vendors.
In the process of creating the memo, Nagaram also sought feedback from International Academy East Principal Patrick Griffin, as well as many of his teachers. Griffin said in an email how impressed he was with Nagaram’s engagement with the topic.
“When we developed our own AI guidance policy at the International Academy, our priority was to create a framework that balances innovation with academic integrity, ensuring that technology remains a ‘co-pilot’ rather than a replacement for human judgments and ideas,” Griffin said. “Seeing Rohan advocate for these same values of clarity and accountability at a state level is a testament to the proactive, principled leadership we hope to foster in all our students.”
Nagaram has already shared his memo with local and state educators, as well as legislators like Sen. Michael Webber. He is interested in further exploring AI and its capabilities as a tool.
“So, I think further work … that I probably need to do is maybe expand this to different schools and different districts and maybe even pursue this nationally, because I don’t feel like this is just a statewide issue,” Nagaram said. “I feel like it’s a national (issue) … and I really feel that transparency and having clear rules and particular use cases is helpful, because it’s able to tell a student if they’re able to do a certain thing and whether that’s acceptable or not.”