The Gorham School Committee voted 7-0 Wednesday to implement what it calls a student and family artificial intelligence handbook.

The handbook, developed by a committee of administrators, teachers, parents and students, outlines rules and regulations for students’ use of artificial intelligence. It is the first official, districtwide guidance of its kind in Maine, its authors say.

Gorham Schools Superintendent Heather Perry said it seemed essential to come up with the handbook before the district starts using MagicSchool AI in the 2026-27 school year. MagicSchool AI is an artificial intelligence tool that streamlines teaching tasks such as lesson planning and quiz-making and assists students with AI literacy.

“(MagicSchool AI) will not be our long-term platform, but that’s what we’re going to use initially to help train and help people see what the possibilities are, where to be wary, where to be careful, and the things to look out for,” Perry said.

The 22-page handbook emphasizes transparency about the use of AI, using it ethically and without replacing human judgment, and the importance of data protection and privacy. It draws on frameworks from the Maine Department of Education, Connecticut boarding school Choate Rosemary Hall, and the College Board in the form of checklists and acronyms that help students determine if a given use of AI falls within district rules.

One such acronym is HUMAN, which stands for halting and reflecting on the AI use beforehand, utilizing effective prompting, monitoring for accuracy and bias, authenticating the work, and noting key elements of the usage.

“What we’re clear about in the handbook is if (students) have any question about the use of AI or not in their work, they need to ask the teacher,” Perry said. The district’s next step, she added, is to create a similar handbook just for teachers. Staff will undergo two full days of training on AI before school starts in the fall.

Oliver Emerson and Abe Palme are sophomores at Gorham High School who joined the committee on the advice of their computer science teacher. They both said their AI use in school is mostly limited to prompting large language models, like ChatGPT and Claude, to generate practice quizzes and study guides.

“When I’m using AI, I try to think about, is this replacing critical thinking or skills that I’m supposed to be developing in school, and by using AI, am I still being able to use those skills?” Emerson said. He and Palme aimed to help other students answer that question with the handbook. Some of their peers, they said, currently use AI to generate entire assignments daily.

Emerson said one of his teachers uses Notebook LM, Google’s AI tools, effectively in class for presenting lesson materials briefly and coherently. However, teacher use of AI has not always worked well.

“I have a teacher that used artificial intelligence almost exclusively to generate their assignments this year, and they were not as high quality or in-depth as some of the other teachers’. I found that frustrating,” Palme said.

Palme said there are some features of MagicSchool AI that he finds useful and some that he doesn’t. He thinks the platform could advance over time to produce high-quality assignments, but dislikes that there is a feature to generate emails, which he believes should be human-written and personal.

Duncan Smith is a parent of a fourth grader at Village Elementary and a member of the handbook committee. He said his son currently uses AI to make funny videos, photos and research video game strategies, but he wants him to eventually learn coding and software engineering.

“What’s nice is these (AI) tools have been created, and they’ve made the barrier to entry much smaller,” Smith said. “There’s a balance between over-regulating how we’re supposed to use it and making sure that we teach our children the right way to use it.”

In his work on the handbook, he used AI to research what policies other schools are adopting. He would like to see instructors in schools eventually teaching students the most recent AI technology and strategy.

The handbook also mentions key privacy laws to follow and advises students to limit AI use with its harmful environmental impacts in mind.

“We really hope that this handbook is considered not the end of a conversation, but the start of a conversation,” Perry said.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated on June 12 to correct the spelling of Abe Palme’s last name.