GenAI Acceptable Usage Menu

This usage menu from The Kinkaid School sets five levels of AI use a teacher can assign to a piece of work: Limited AI Use, AI as a Thought Partner, AI as an Editor, AI as an Analyst, and AI as a Co-Creator. Each level spells out what students may do for reading, content creation, and problem-solving, and how they disclose their AI use to the teacher. The version above is 2.4, dated August 3, 2026. You can also open the PDF in a new tab.

Kinkaid adapted the menu from Woodward Academy's usage scale, Vera Cubero's work for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, and the AI Assessment Scale by Mike Perkins, Leon Furze, Jasper Roe, and Jason MacVaugh.

What changed since version 2.2 (October 2024)

• The first level is now Limited AI Use instead of No Use. Students do the work themselves first and may then use AI to review it, quiz themselves, or explore further. For reading, the menu says "A summary is not the text."
• Limited AI Use requires disclosure. Students must disclose any AI use and be able to explain all submitted work. Under version 2.2, the No Use level needed no disclosure statement.
• The approved platforms are now Flint, Canva, Canvas Ignite AI, and tools in the Adobe Creative Suite. Canvas Ignite AI replaced Typing Mind.

The other four levels read the same as in version 2.2.

Kinkaid's employee handbook asks teachers to use the menu to tell students, assignment by assignment, when they may use AI. The level a teacher picks also sets what students hand in. At the Thought Partner and Editor levels, students disclose their AI use and submit copies of their chats. At the Analyst and Co-Creator levels, they also cite AI-created content in the required format.

In our case study with the school, Vinnie Vrotny, their Director of Technology, described how teachers shaped the menu after its first rollout in fall 2024:

"During this Lunch and Learn, some of our math and science teachers came up to us and said, “This is really good and really helpful, and this doesn't address all the ways that we might want to use this within math and science.” They started to make suggestions, which we told them we were open to. We decided to let them as departments first begin to try to define what usage looks like and then share it with us."

The menu is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Kinkaid asks that schools adapting it keep the license and all attributions, and send a copy of the adaptation to Vinnie at vinnie.vrotny@kinkaid.org. Kinkaid's AI principles and handbook policies point students to this menu for the tools they may use.