District bans AI glasses in attempt to safeguard student privacy

Recently, the Oshkosh Area School District (OASD) has been honing in on restricting AI glasses, a trending product from Meta, to preserve privacy and ensure educational ethics. A product that has seen popularity spikes throughout the district and nation alike, these glasses are associated with real-world issues on the rise. 

According to Jason Schmidt, Director of Technology for the OASD, this sought-after product had somewhat humble origins. 

“The Meta glasses started out as a niche product and have been around for two or three years now. Like the Meta Ray-Ban glasses came out about two-ish years ago, and they were some of the first on the market,” he said. “Since then, things have grown significantly.”

The popularity of this product  has allowed it to gain much more traction within the Meta company, even extending to partnerships with large corporations like Ray-Ban and Oakley. This craze has spread throughout the nation indiscriminately; according to Principal Becky Montour, West is no exception. 

“We noticed a handful of students came back from winter break wearing AI glasses, which is when it first came to our attention,” she said. 

Especially during spring testing and highly-secure assessments such as the ACT, district concerns surrounding this product and cheating spiked. Montour noted that the presence of even one pair could throw a wrench into the testing process.

“They could jeopardize an entire testing session if a student wears them during the ACT,” she said. “With the ability to record and take pictures, that would be a testing security infraction, which could potentially put every student’s test at risk of being voided by the state if they were in the same room.”

However, Schmidt feels that cheating is not the primary issue: privacy is.

“While cheating is a concern, the bigger issue has to do with privacy,” he said. “The way that these glasses are set up is that they have built-in cameras, a battery pack, and a built-in microphone. It’s really easy for someone to start recording something without people knowing about it.”

Montour agrees, stating that student privacy is West’s main priority. 

“From a building perspective our main privacy concern has to do with students potentially wearing them in bathrooms or locker rooms due to their ability to take pictures and record videos,” she said. 

This being the case, administration has set forth stringent policies surrounding students’ abilities to record in school. 

“We have policies in place that have to do with student privacy, and one of those policies that we have implemented has to do with students’ ability to record what is going on in school,” Schmidt said. “The way the policy is written, there are really strict guidelines about when you can and cannot use what we call ‘personal communication devices’.”

According to Montour, the OASD has taken broad action in order to prevent privacy leaks and cheating during school hours. 

“We are also concerned with test security, even with our school assessments,” she said. “So the district has banned these devices from being worn in the buildings.” 

However, Schmidt feels that putting lasting policies into place, both on an academic and legal basis, has been a challenge due to the rapidly-changing nature of AI technology. 

“We’re working on our third version of it in 18 months, which is really fast-paced for policy,” he said. 

Regardless, junior Farhana Amin believes implementing rules surrounding use of this product makes sense, and that its presence is not necessary in school. 

“They’re not essential and are mostly used in recreational recording instances,” she said. “There’s no good reason to use them for school right now.” 

Amin agreed that privacy concerns are valid regarding that the public is generally ill-informed about the presence of AI in their midst outside of screens. 

“The glasses are definitely a bit of an invasion of privacy with all the features that are unknown to the ‘general person’,” she said. “I think it's fair for them to be banned in schools and most public places.”

Sophomore Lucy Amel is also in support of pushing back AI glasses used in school due to their scope of capabilities. 

“The rules are valid considering that Meta glasses have a wide range of capabilities that could allow many students to cheat on tests, assignments, or projects,” she said. 

Being that Meta is a parent company to several infamous satellites, Schmidt made it clear that not much about the glasses themselves gives much privacy to users.

“Meta is the manufacturer of these glasses, and Meta is also the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Meta, just like X, and Snapchat, and Google, has AI models that have to eat an unimaginable amount of data,” he said. “Everything that you do with Meta glasses gets sent to Meta for them to train these models.”

With lengthy terms of service that can easily be overlooked, Schmidt feels users are more or less unaware of what they are getting themselves into. 

“There is also a clause in the terms of service buried in there that says it ‘may be reviewed by a human being’, so anything that you record in there gets tagged and feeds the model,” he said.

Extending beyond the district, Schmidt expects expansive AI use is contributing to a new set of human rights violations. Though the AI glasses bring convenience and fascinating technology, users never truly see the full story. 

“There is the internal issue of district policy and the bad things that come out of having access to something like this, and there’s also the privacy and human rights issue surrounding exploitation and cheap labor,” he said. “In addition to the questionable ethics and data tagging, there is also exploitation of labor pools in places like Kenya. There’s a human part of it, too.” 

by Phoebe Fletcher

Published March 20, 2026

Oshkosh West Index Volume 122 Issue VI