AI Principles and Policies

The Kinkaid School in Houston sent us two documents that work as a pair: its Guiding Principles on Artificial Intelligence and Generative Artificial Intelligence (August 2025), and the AI sections of its All School Handbook and Employee Handbook (September 2026). The PDF above has both, principles first. You can also open the PDF in a new tab.

The principles start from one commitment: AI should "augment, not replace, our uniquely human capacities." Every use has to begin with a defined educational or operational goal, and a person stays in charge at every stage. Six principles follow: human-centered, intentional, purposeful, safe, ethical, and age and task appropriate. The 2024 version listed five one-word principles. Kinkaid added human-centered and tied "appropriate" to a student's age and the task.

What changed since the 2024 handbook

• The policy now covers agentic AI by name. Students may not use AI agents that reach into school communications, the student information system, or learning platforms without approval from the Director of Innovation and Technology and a faculty or staff member. Employees may not connect unapproved agents to financial, health, student information, or learning management systems.
• Both handbooks have a new deepfake and synthetic media policy. It bans AI-generated media that impersonates or defames a community member, shows a campus emergency that never happened, or imitates official school communications. A violation does not require malicious intent, so content made as a joke can still count.
• Students who are allowed to use AI must use the tools listed on Kinkaid's Generative AI Acceptable Usage Menu. The 2024 handbook named Flint and did not reference the menu.
• The plagiarism section now counts unapproved or uncited use of generative AI and AI agents as academic dishonesty, and limits students to school-supplied AI platforms.
• The 2024 version named specific products (ChatGPT, Bard, Bing, LLaMA, DALL-E 2, Midjourney). The 2026 version drops the product list, so it does not go stale as tools change.

Kinkaid kept its 2024 rule that teachers may not rely on AI alone to grade work, write feedback to students, or draft report card comments, parent emails, or college recommendations. The handbook says teachers must remain "the human in the loop."

Kinkaid has also shared its GenAI Student Literacy Scaffolding, which maps the AI skills students build from kindergarten through 12th grade.

For any materials shared by Kinkaid, they ask that if a school uses the materials as the basis of their work, the school 1) keeps the same Creative Commons licensing as on the original (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) and 2) sends Kinkaid a copy of their adaptation so that the Kinkaid team can learn and update their own based on the additions. You can email any adaptations to Vinnie at vinnie.vrotny@kinkaid.org.