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The state Education Department was right to ask the Salamanca City Central School District to pause its plan to launch a pilot program featuring a Realbotix educational robot and digital avatar in its high school STEAM program during the upcoming school year.
There are a lot of unanswered questions that should be answered before this newest bit of technology is used in local classrooms. Concerns raised by parents and educators prompted Betty Rosa, state education commissioner, to send a letter to Salamanca school district officials requesting the pause. The pause prompted the New York State United Teachers to send its own letter to Rosa, Gov. Kathy Hochul and members of the Board of Regents asking for the Education Department to develop guidelines governing the use of humanoid robots and artificial intelligence in the classroom.
Salamanca school officials had billed the Realbotix robot and digital avatar as a way to encourage critical thinking and foster learning for students, saying the technology has been loaded exclusively with district-approved curriculum, instructional strategies and historical information about Salamanca. It sounds good in theory. We're not sure it works yet in practicality.
We hope the Salamanca experience prompts a discussion about the role of robots and AI in classrooms. No one should be saying robots can replace teachers, certainly not in 2026. But we also should all be able to recognize that the job of the classroom teacher has gotten more difficult over the past couple of decades, and it's entirely possible that humanoid robots, used properly, can help make a teacher's workload more manageable. It is entirely possible that the use of humanoid robots and artificial intelligence can help school districts that are struggling to hire enough teachers – like Jamestown, which is now offering hiring incentives – and aides in areas where there just aren't enough educators to go around.
A temporary delay makes sense in the Salamanca program and others like it makes sense. But this delay should be just that and not a permanent end.