Parent sues Palo Alto school district over AI procedures
Parent sues Palo Alto school district over AI procedures
Publish Date: 2026-05-11 18:15:00
Source Domain: www.paloaltoonline.com
Palo Alto Unified is being sued by a parent of a student whose essay was rejected because he used allegedly used AI. File photo by Veronica Weber.
A local parent is suing the Palo Alto Unified School District, alleging that a high school English teacher falsely accused his son of using artificial intelligence to write an essay and required the student to retake the assignment in-person, resulting in a lower class grade.
Parent Takashi Kato believes his son was discriminated against as a multilingual Asian male and is demanding the school reverse the student’s grade, according to a lawsuit filed last week in the North District of the U.S. District Court. Kato claims school staff wrongly penalized his student and did not follow a formal grading procedure. He hopes to put an end to the in-person retake practice through his federal lawsuit.
In a district that aims to embrace advancement, administrators have attended AI workshops to learn about new ways to use the technology. But so far, district leaders have not created an overarching policy, leaving teachers to fight AI use on their own. For that reason, the lawsuit falls into a gray area of academic procedure.
Kato’s son, who is a sophomore at Palo Alto High School, turned in his essay about “The Crucible,” an Arthur Miller play about Salem witch trials, on October 30, 2025. Two weeks later, he submitted the essay on Turnitin, a software the district uses for AI detection in student submissions.
The student’s teacher, Sarah Bartlett, said Turnitin flagged 76% of the essay as AI generated or influenced, according to the suit. She also noted that the student admitted to using Grammarly for synonym searches, which Kato claimed was false. Bartlett’s policy, which is described as non-punitive, allows students to retake the assignment in class, according to the lawsuit.
The student received a D on the rewrite, dropping his final grade to a C, according to the suit….
