Two Arizona high school students will vote on a national artificial intelligence policy in Boston this month at the 2026 Youth AI Leadership & Innovation Fellowship, a program hosted by AASA, The School Superintendents Association. The policy they help shape could reach more than 10,000 school superintendents who decide whether to adopt it in their districts.
Shamitha Doki and Nandana Warrier, both juniors at Mountain Ridge High School in Glendale's Deer Valley Unified School District, will serve as Arizona's "senators" at the July 17-19 event. Students from across the country will debate and vote on AI guidelines through a democratic process, with the final policy distributed to AASA's national network of school leaders.
What the national program aims to do
The fellowship focuses on ethical technology use and teaching practices. Rather than a top-down mandate, AASA designed the program so students develop the frameworks for how AI enters their classrooms. Participating schools can then choose to implement the student-created policy.
Each state sends two representatives. The students draft, amend, and vote on policy language that addresses real classroom scenarios - from how teachers evaluate new AI tools to what acceptable student use looks like.
Arizona's representatives and their proposals
Warrier plans to introduce a policy centered on giving teachers control over AI tool adoption before any school-wide rollout. "I believe that teachers should be able to lead pilot programs so that they can test the AI tools before implementing them in the school so that they know if it's truly going to be beneficial instead of it wasting time and resources," she said.
Doki is working on a policy that draws a clear line between AI as a thinking aid and AI as a shortcut. Her proposal would allow students to use AI for starting points or outlines, but not for graded work. It would also require that all students have access to the same AI resources.
"AI is just so ever-growing and it's in everything we do," Doki said. "It's important to be able to adapt with that and that means you need to be able to adapt to any situation and we want to make sure we can safely use AI and implement it into our school education system."
Beyond the policy vote
The fellowship also connects students with AI industry leaders and peers from other states. Warrier said the exposure to AI applications outside the classroom - in art, writing, and media - has already shifted how she views the technology's reach. The networking component gives students a direct line to professionals working in the field.
For educators building classroom AI competency, programs like this align with broader efforts to integrate the technology thoughtfully. Resources such as the AI Learning Path for Teachers offer structured training on evaluating and using AI tools in lesson planning and instruction.
Why this matters for educators
When students help write the rules, adoption rates tend to rise. Policies shaped by the people who will live under them face less resistance and surface blind spots that administrators might miss. For teachers and principals watching this program, the key takeaway is practical: the student-senator model produces AI guidelines that balance academic integrity with genuine skill-building - and the resulting policy will be available to any district that wants it. School leaders interested in broader AI training can explore AI for Education courses that cover classroom integration, ethics, and tool selection.
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