Baltimore schools team up with OpenAI for teachers to use ChatGPT
Baltimore City Public Schools has entered a partnership with OpenAI that permits the district's teachers to use the company's ChatGPT for Teachers product.
OpenAI said in a statement Thursday that Baltimore City Public Schools is one of the latest districts to join the partnership to explore the use of the AI tool in the classroom.
CBS News Baltimore has reached out to Baltimore City Public Schools for a statement on the cooperative agreement.
In its announcement, OpenAI said it first introduced ChatGPT for Teachers to 150,000 teachers and staff across the United States in 2025.
"Our goal was to give educators a secure place to explore AI, understand where it is useful, and help shape how it should be used in education. Today, we are expanding this work to 55 additional school systems across 20 states, bringing ChatGPT for Teachers to over 100,000 more educators and staff," the announcement said.
OpenAI said some of the most valuable uses of ChatGPT for Teachers in the classroom are to help teachers adapt lesson plans, draft family communications, prepare substitute materials and move through administrative work faster. This is all designed to allow educators to provide more attention to their students.
OpenAI cites privacy safeguards
In an analysis conducted from Jan. 1 to July 16, educators sent more than 1.9 million messages related to time-saving tasks, the company said. They included 900,000 messages about report cards and progress reports, 800,000 about lesson planning and more than 100,000 each about substitute plans and teacher evaluation materials.
In deploying the product, OpenAI said it has expanded "the privacy infrastructure that helps districts adopt AI responsibly." ChatGPT for Teachers "was designed with education-grade privacy, security, and administrative controls," the company added.
Data shared in ChatGPT for Teachers workspace is not used to train OpenAI's models by default, and school and district leaders can bring educators into a secure, managed workspace, according to the company.
The tool also includes "role-based controls" designed to support school requirements set by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The act requires schools that receive federal education funding to protect student privacy, grant access to education records, and restrict the sharing of personal data.
In addition to Baltimore City Public Schools, ChatGPT for Teachers was also recently launched in 54 other school systems across 20 states, OpenAI said.
"AI in education works best when teachers lead. Our goal is to give them the tools, trust, training, and voice to do exactly that," the company said.