OpenAI is broadening its ChatGPT for Teachers initiative to 55 new school systems across 20 states, extending access to more than 100,000 additional educators and staff. When ChatGPT for Teachers was first introduced in 2025 to nearly 150,000 teachers and staff, the aim was to provide educators with a secure environment to explore AI, identify its practical uses, and contribute to shaping its role in education.
The latest cohort of district partnerships includes one in five of America's 20 largest public school districts and some of the nation's most diverse school systems. With this expansion, OpenAI is now collaborating with more than 100 K–12 organizations across 30 states, offering free access and training to over 300,000 educators and staff.
Alongside this expansion, OpenAI is announcing a data privacy agreement spanning 16 states - a first for the industry - that establishes a common framework for districts to assess ChatGPT for Teachers against their student data privacy requirements, simplifying responsible AI adoption across school systems.
OpenAI's work remains guided by the principle that AI should support learning rather than shortcut it, and that educators should maintain control over how AI influences classroom experiences. ChatGPT for Teachers continues to be available exclusively to administrators, faculty, and educators, and remains a free tool for verified U.S. K–12 educators through June 2028.
Building Trust into District Adoption
For school systems, responsible AI adoption requires clear privacy protections and mechanisms for district leaders to understand and manage how tools are used.
OpenAI is expanding the privacy infrastructure supporting responsible district AI adoption by introducing a 16-state National Data Privacy Agreement through the Student Data Privacy Consortium framework. This gives districts in participating states a recognized pathway to evaluate and adopt ChatGPT for Teachers without negotiating separate agreements on a district-by-district basis. The agreement is designed to meet districts and states within the privacy processes they already use, adapting to state and local requirements.
The signed General Offers currently cover 16 states: Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington. California is also covered by a separate agreement.
This initiative builds on statewide agreements OpenAI has previously signed and reflects a broader commitment to meeting districts where they are, with the legal and privacy protections their communities require.
ChatGPT for Teachers was built with education-grade privacy, security, and administrative controls. Data shared in a ChatGPT for Teachers workspace is not used to train OpenAI's models by default, and school and district leaders can bring educators into a managed workspace with role-based controls designed to support schools' FERPA requirements.
Learning Through a Shared Implementation Model
As AI evolves from answering questions to helping carry out increasingly complex, multi-step workflows, access to tools like ChatGPT alone is insufficient. Through OpenAI's shared implementation model, the company works alongside districts to provide hands-on training, support for district leaders, peer learning across school systems, and ongoing guidance to help educators build skills and confidence with these capabilities. Through this close collaboration, feedback from districts helps OpenAI understand what educators and administrators need next.
This structure offers a vision of what responsible AI adoption can look like at scale - when teachers experiment in a secure workspace, districts implement AI with appropriate oversight and expert guidance, and educators and leaders share what works across classrooms, schools, and communities.
Leah Belsky, Vice President of Education at OpenAI, stated that education has always helped young people prepare for the world they will inherit, and in the age of AI, students need educators and schools that help them build judgment, confidence, and agency with these tools. She emphasized that by partnering with educators, the goal is to give teachers time, training, and a community to learn from one another, while educators help OpenAI build alongside the people who know students best.
Lynwood Unified was among the first districts to join OpenAI's initial K–12 cohort. Their vision centers on treating AI as an equity issue, prioritizing privacy, and giving educators support to explore it responsibly. Through initial training and ongoing space to experiment and learn with peers, faculty are growing more confident and using AI to enhance their teaching.
District leaders across the partnerships have shared their perspectives:
- Christina Ordonez from Township 211 Unified School District highlighted that partnering with OpenAI allowed them to bring every staff member into one protected environment, training everyone from librarians to principal secretaries not only to use ChatGPT in their jobs but to help students think about keeping humans in the loop.
- Joe Binswanger from Sarasota County Schools expressed optimism about AI's potential to enhance teaching and learning, noting increased confidence moving forward with additional security measures in ChatGPT that provide important safeguards for staff and district data.
- Patrick Gittisriboongul, Superintendent of Lynwood Unified School District, emphasized that every school district needs an AI strategy now, and that partnering with OpenAI helped them define priorities and surface questions needed to build their AI literacy framework.
- Christine Mai from Houston Independent School District described how their AI work starts with identifying the right problem to solve, helping educators and staff build fluency and confidence to keep humans at the center while streamlining processes that support every classroom.
- Rob Dickson from Wichita Public Schools noted that working with OpenAI gives teachers a safe place to explore these tools, discover where they can make the biggest difference, and bring the best ideas back to their classrooms.
Giving Teachers the Agentic Tools and Support to Lead
Across OpenAI's work with educators, the most immediate value often starts with time - helping teachers adapt lessons, draft family communications, prepare substitute materials, and move through recurring administrative work faster so they can devote more attention to students. In a privacy-preserving analysis from January 1 to July 16, educators sent more than 1.9 million messages related to time-saving tasks, including 900,000 about report cards and progress reports, 800,000 about lesson planning, and more than 100,000 each about substitute plans and teacher-evaluation materials.
Tools like the K-12 Educator plugin support work such as lesson planning, adapting materials, analyzing information, and creating classroom resources, while providing school and district leaders with administrative controls and education-grade privacy and security protections.
OpenAI is also continuing training through OpenAI Academy, district partnerships, and the National Academy for AI Instruction with the American Federation of Teachers - a five-year initiative designed to equip 400,000 K–12 educators with practical AI skills.
This summer, more than 1,600 teachers, administrators, and district leaders are participating in hands-on AI Skills Jams hosted by OpenAI Academy in partnership with the Walton Family Foundation. Teachers are working alongside peers and OpenAI mentors on challenges they already know well - from adapting lessons for different learners and communicating with families to navigating district guidance and reducing administrative work.
These sessions are already demonstrating what teacher-led adoption looks like in practice. In Fairfax, an elementary music teacher brought her curriculum, grading policies, district regulations, and teaching approach into ChatGPT to create a year-long planning resource. A fourth-grade teacher in Jonesboro used ChatGPT to turn lengthy lesson plans into focused 30- to 40-minute lessons centered on daily required standards. Chicago educators described using ChatGPT to simulate science experiments, support student animation projects, and analyze more than 200 novels for gaps in representation. In San Bernardino, a principal used it to tackle a complex scheduling task that could otherwise have taken hours or days.
Across the first Skills Jams, 93% of participants said they left with something they could use again, and 96% said they planned to apply what they learned within 30 days. Educators also reported that some of their best ideas came from seeing how colleagues approached the same tools differently.
OpenAI maintains that AI in education works best when teachers lead, and the company's goal is to give them the tools, trust, training, and voice to do exactly that.
New district partnerships include: Abilene Independent School District (TX), Adlai E. Stevenson High School District 125 (IL), Baltimore City Public Schools (MD), Boise School District (ID), Clarkstown Central School District (NY), El Dorado County Office of Education (CA), Epic Charter Schools (OK), Flagler Schools (FL), Fort Worth Independent School District (TX), Frisco Independent School District (TX), Humble Independent School District (TX), Kern High School District (CA), Killeen Independent School District (TX), Laramie County School District 1 (WY), Lewisville Independent School District (TX), Los Angeles County Office of Education (CA), Needham Public Schools (MA), New Trier Township High School District 203 (IL), Northside Independent School District (TX), Oakland Schools (MI), Orange County Department of Education (CA), Orange County Public Schools (FL), Pocantico Hills Central School District (NY), Rye Country Day School (NY), Santa Cruz County Office of Education (CA), Sarasota County Schools (FL), St. Vrain Valley Schools (CO), Township High School District 211 (IL), Ventura Unified School District (CA), Virginia Beach City Public Schools (VA), Westminster Public Schools (CO).