Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam and the Hartford Public Schools Board of Education are at odds over an AI-based platform recently launched by the city to collect resident input over the future of the city’s schools, as concerns over privacy and data collection lead to backlash.
Hartford Board of Education chairperson Shonta Browdy issued a statement Monday stating that Hartford Public Schools and the Board of Education were not involved with the decision to launch the survey on Remesh as announced by Arulampalam.
According to the statement, the decision to immediately launch the platform was hastily made and left little time to be reviewed and noted that the information submitted by parents and student is not covered under the district’s privacy policies.
The statement noted that Remesh’s terms of service are not the same at the district’s privacy policies and warned parents and guardians to “carefully review” the website’s terms before letting minors input their information. The data collection’s website terms state that it “is the exclusive owner of your comments, opinions, feedback, responses or other input that you provide” and may “freely use, share, publish and use the feedback in perpetuity, in any form or medium, throughout the world for any purpose whatsoever.”
Browdy said she was not informed that the Mayor’s Office was going to release the survey and had no input in creating the questions. She said she is concerned residents will think the survey is affiliated with the Board of Education.
“I put the statement out for clarity because there was confusion and questions coming my way thinking this is our survey,” Browdy said. “I got emails and questions even from our school staff about the survey. So I put the statement out letting people know this has nothing to do with the Board of Education. This came directly from the Mayor’s Office without our knowledge.”
A spokesperson for the city said the clause mentioned from Remesh’s terms and conditions is a common clause used by most commercial survey tools such as SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics and other common survey platforms used by city governments. The Mayor’s Office said that the feedback provided through Remesh will not be used for anything other than the engagement process without explicit permission from participants. While Remesh has features that use AI, they are not being used as part of this engagement process, according to the Mayor’s Office.
“For too long, the most important conversations about our children’s futures have happened in back rooms behind closed doors,” said Arulampalam. “My administration’s North Star has always been transparency and a commitment to ensuring every resident has a seat at the table. We cannot make the difficult decisions required to stabilize our schools without the people of Hartford leading the way.
“Since we first announced our intentions to tackle the long-standing challenges of our district, I have welcomed the Board of Education to join us at the table,” he added. “It is disturbing to sow mistrust and characterize a tool meant to facilitate public dialogue as anything other than that.”
Browdy said that she is concerned the mayor will use the survey to circumvent the Board of Education on funding for school renovation projects. In December, the mayor paused several planned renovation projects at S.A.N.D. Elementary School, María C. Colón Sánchez Elementary School, McDonough Middle School, Parkville Community School, Moylan Elementary School and Batchelder School.
Arulampalam said he made the decision due to what he called “low enrollment numbers” at the schools and instead wants to ensure the city uses the funds more carefully. The move was met with an outcry among school staff and teachers. So far, the city is seeking public input on how to best use the state-provided funds.
“What is going to happen is the mayor wants to close schools and he doesn’t want to renovate the schools we already received money for,” Browdy said. “So he creates a platform with scripted questions that will lead to what he wants to do. The questions will lead to his plan to close several schools in Hartford. He will come up with a report the he will parade around. But the only thing he can do with that report is submit it to us because the Board of Education runs the city’s schools.”
The Courant reached out to Hartford Superintendent of Schools Dr. Andraé Townsel but did not hear back in time for the story to be published.
Stephen Underwood can be reached at [email protected].