The Santa Fe AI.
Santa Fe Public Schools is in year two of putting AI tools in classrooms. This is a community campaign about what those tools do, whose terms they run on, and what the deciding should look like from here. It is built for parents, teachers, students, and anyone watching Santa Fe as the model their own district will copy.
A child reads to a machine. Follow the thread of how New Mexico decided she would — and who answers when she asks for help.
This page is not an attack on a person. Neal Weaver, the deputy superintendent who set most of the AI direction at SFPS, left for Lawton, Oklahoma on July 1, 2026. A leadership change is a normal moment for a community to look again at a big decision.
That is what this campaign is built around. The chance to ask Should we? — as parents, as educators, as policy makers in this state — and to ask it together, in public, while the decision is still re-examinable, before the next contract cycle locks it in. The argument is about the system. The receipts are public.
By the time they walk across the stage, those kids will carry years of voice recordings from a K-2 reading app, years of learning-pattern data from a math tutoring app, and whatever they have typed into a chatbot under the district's pilot. Most vendor contracts let the company keep that data, with names removed, to keep training their models. The math is real. The scorecard footnotes every number.
Three meanings, one shape.
Every driver in Santa Fe knows what the Bypass is. It is the loop you take to go around the city instead of through it. The metaphor is already in the room.
There is an older bypass. In 1880 the railroad surveyed northern New Mexico and routed the main line eighteen miles south of the town it was named after. Santa Fe did not have the grade or the federal land grants the railroad wanted. The community built a spur to Lamy at its own expense to reach its own namesake railroad. The town in the name was not on the line.
The 2026 bypass and the 1880 bypass are the same shape. A big piece of infrastructure is being routed by people who are not from the place. The route is being picked because it is easiest, fastest, and best for the companies behind it. The community in the name is not steering. The families whose homes do not have what the new line needs, fast internet, devices, language support, are bypassed again.
The whole essay, The Santa Fe Bypass, is forthcoming on Medium and on this site.
The town in the name was not on the line.
The starting set.
Before anything else on this page, read these five. Together they show what was asked, what was announced, what was presented to the board, and who was in the room when the announcement became policy.
An earlier Weaver, before the modern AI wave, asks the questions that have gone quiet in the 2026 communications.
Nineteen slides presented to the Board of Education three weeks before the SFNM article. Names the vendor partners, the policy scaffold, the training intervention, and a reporting cadence that did not hold.
The district's framing, the vocabulary, and the names of the companies. The piece to read first.
The working group's recommendations — privacy standards, a vetting process, tribal data sovereignty, a clear opt-out — came one month before the statewide mandate took effect without them.
A recurring planning call mostly made up of vendor CTOs and other district CIOs. The peer agreement that turned into the policy.
The moment this was built for is here.
The campaign shipped in May, aimed at a July leadership transition. Eight weeks later: the transition happened, the Legislature’s analyst named the policy gap in writing, an independent parent campaign organized, the vendor answered a legislative committee, and the privacy policy changed under everyone’s feet. Dated, sourced, in order.
A Legislative Education Study Committee policy brief reports New Mexico “does not currently have statewide procurement standards for AI tools, student data privacy requirements specific to AI, and a formal evaluation process for AI education tools” — and that it is unclear what vetting PED used before mandating Amira statewide. Read the brief (PDF) ↗
Dr. Neal Weaver, the deputy superintendent of operations who set most of the AI direction, begins as superintendent of Lawton Public Schools, Oklahoma. The operations role has since been refilled. The re-examination window this campaign was built around is now open.
Willamette Week reports that Amira's $5,160 pilot contract with Portland Public Schools had checked boxes for student disability status, migrant status, and living situation. Amira states no such data was ever transmitted; why the boxes were checked in the contract went unanswered. Willamette Week ↗
A Santa Fe New Mexican op-ed by Ifeoma Ozoma announces the independent Amira Opt-Out SFPS campaign — parents requesting the paper or non-verbal assessment formats and refusing voice recording, in writing, before the first assessment window. This campaign neither directs nor speaks for that effort; the existence of organized parent demand is the data point, and parents deserve to know their options exist. amiraoptoutsfps.com ↗
The LESC hears ninety minutes of Amira testimony in Taos from the vendor's CEO and PED's assessment office. On the record: the contract is a year-to-year piggyback through Cooperative Educational Services, the replacement RFP goes public this fall for a 2027–28 classroom start, a “troubled child alert” flags what students say into the microphone, and voice-recording retention is a configuration the state chooses. Timestamped and verified against the archived webcast: The Hearing Record → · Hearing agenda (PDF) ↗
At public comment the next afternoon, six of twelve speakers answer the Amira presentation directly — two Santa Fe parents, a grandparent, an Albuquerque parent for the Boost New Mexico coalition, a Roswell district administrator who names a Secretary-level memo requiring Amira for progress monitoring, and a retired teacher. No speaker defends the deployment. Verbatim, timestamped: Day 2 — the public record →
A local creator's explainer video about the hearing draws 578 comments from 402 accounts in five days — 10 self-identified educators, 36 self-identified parents and family members, 88 comments raising privacy or consent, and zero comments defending the deployment. Anonymous comments aren't verified fact; the countable volume, speed, and one-sidedness of the reaction are the data points. The thread ↗
Amira's privacy policy “Last Updated” date changes to July 20 — seven days after the op-ed, five days after the hearing. Some terms tightened; others narrowed or moved. The before-and-after, section by section, every change marked: The Amira Policy Diff →
The first Amira assessment window opens with the school year (beginning-of-year: August–September). A parent who wants the paper or non-verbal format, or wants voice retention off, needs the request in writing before it opens. Fifteen business days is also what an IPRA response takes — filed now, the documents arrive before the window closes. File an IPRA →
Every choice rides four clocks.
The fastest clock in the room sets the pace for the others, unless somebody puts a brake on it. Right now, the machine clock is forcing the institutional clock, and the ecological clock, the children, is taking the damage.
How fast tech companies ship new models and new features. The clock that is forcing every other clock in the room.
How much attention a teacher, a student, or a parent has in a given day. The clock the rollout treats as if it were endless. It is not.
How long it takes a district, a school board, or a records request to move. The only clock the community can set on purpose. It is being overrun.
How a child's brain develops over a generation. A 7th-grader today graduates in 2031 and turns 28 in 2041. This clock is the children. It is the one taking the damage.
Listening. Deciding. Doing. Adjusting.
A normal way to check whether a community decision was made well is to ask four ordinary questions. Was the community listened to before the choice. Was the choice made by the people with the authority to make it. Was the doing done competently. Is the adjusting actually happening when the community reports back. Here is where the SFPS AI rollout sits on each.
No public listening surface for parents was opened before the rollout went into classrooms.
The body with the authority to set district AI policy (the Board) was briefed; it did not adopt policy. The deliberation happened in a recurring vendor-and-CIO call.
Vendor selection is technically defensible. Khanmigo's Socratic design is a reasonable choice. The classroom-level execution is the part the rollout got right.
No feedback mechanism is documented in the public record. The reporting cadence the deck promised the Board (Q2/Q3/Q4 SY2024-25) was not delivered.
Thirteen surfaces. Pick the one that fits you.
Different surfaces for different readers. Parents, board members, journalists, students, anyone wanting to file a public records request. Status is shown honestly so you can see what is live and what is on the way.
Five first reads side by side: a 2018 Weaver talk, the Sep 26 2024 SFPS board study-session deck, the Oct 2024 Santa Fe New Mexican article, the July 2025 LESC AI Working Group report, and the 2026 SFPS podcast.
Machine clock vs human clock vs institutional clock vs ecological clock, applied to the SFPS rollout. Names what is being damaged and on what timeline.
Vendor revenue, contract clauses, engagement numbers, broadband floors, undercount estimates. Every claim sourced.
Print-ready. Seven questions to take to the next board meeting. New Mexico context on the back. Fits two pages.
First Spanish draft. Flagged for a native-speaker review pass before publication.
A kitchen-table guide. Six questions to ask a 7th-12th grader this weekend, written for parents who are not tech experts.
Three-minute and seven-minute scripts for public comment at SFPS board meetings. Procedural and calm.
Seven concrete asks: pause new contracts during the leadership change, independent fairness audit, real tribal consultation, parent advisory council with real say, public posting of all vendor contracts, collective-bargaining AI protections for SFPS educators, and voice-recording retention off by default with a standardized written opt-out.
Step-by-step guide to filing a New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act request for SFPS AI contracts. Pre-filled template. The district has 15 business days to respond.
NM 7-12 students in their own words. Moderated. Ships when the first quotes arrive.
Amira's privacy policy, April 12 vs July 20, 2026, side by side with every change marked — both the changes that strengthened it and the ones that narrowed it. The terms governing children's voice data moved mid-campaign; this page holds the record.
Both days of the July 2026 Taos hearing: what the vendor and PED told the Legislature on July 15 — the contract structure, the rebid timeline, the troubled-child alert, the retention rationale — and the six public comments that answered it on July 16. Timestamped, verified against the archived webcasts, every quote one click from the original.
Every named source the campaign rests on, in one place, grouped by the work it does in the argument: local documents, empirical research, governance frameworks, equity data, vendor and financial filings, and the statutes that govern student privacy and public records.
Co-signers section with an open call. The campaign ships solo and builds the coalition in public.
A 13-year-old today will be 28 in 2041. By then, she will have spent two-thirds of her life with an AI in the loop of her own thinking. That is a big deal. The question is whether we are raising kids who can hold their own minds, or kids who outsource thinking to whichever company won the contract. This page names the question. The full treatment is in the research surface below.
Cognitive Warfare — the full treatment →The campaign ships solo. The coalition builds in public.
Co-signers can be parents, teachers, students with parent consent, community leaders, or researchers, in New Mexico or in any district watching Santa Fe as the model. Email the campaign and we will add your name. The campaign address is kinetic-trust@proton.me.