A humanoid robot named Sally was due to take a seat in a Western New York high school classroom this fall, silicone skin, long brown hair and all. Instead, she is on hold.
A plan that had been quietly approved by the Salamanca school board in June turned, over the following weeks, into a public fight over student privacy, screen time and the company that built it, and the state’s top education official has now asked the district to wait.
The Salamanca City Central School District is located on the Seneca Nation reservation in the state’s rural southwest and educates approximately 1,300 students, about one-third of whom identify as American Indian or Alaska Native.
He announced the pause on Friday, after a letter from New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa.
“The Department remains concerned about the effect that a humanoid robot may have in a high school classroom.” Rosa wrote, adding that many parents, teachers and stakeholders were “Your concern about the presence of artificial intelligence technology in classrooms is understandable.”
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It is a malaise that has continued AI in schools far beyond Salamanca.
Sally is the work of Realbotixa Toronto firm that has spent the past year arguing that friendship and physical contact humanoid robots They belong in the classroom and not in the laboratory.
The district paid $57,590 for the robot and an accompanying AI teacher’s assistant, a discount from the list price of $95,000, and planned to use it in high school robotics and artificial intelligence courses based on a curriculum by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Sally remains seated but moves her upper body and face, and the district says it does not carry facial recognition, does not keep recordings and operates on a closed network with no Internet access.
Beyond the robot itself, the package included an AI assistant that students could access as an avatar on their laptops, offering real-time homework help, feedback, and translation in more than 100 languages.
What led a modest driver to state-level history was less the hardware than the manufacturer’s lineage. Realbotix, formerly known as Tokens.com, acquired Simulcra in 2024, the parent company of RealDoll, which makes hyper-realistic sex dolls and companion robots.
Realbotix says the two divisions do not share staff, facilities or technology, and that it is seeking a full separation by September, but the partnership was enough to mobilize teachers unions.
“A robot built by a company associated with sex dolls has no business in our classrooms” said Melinda Person, president of United Teachers of New York State.
Superintendent Mark Beehler has defended the project as a lesson in how to live with technology instead of pretending to ignore it.
“Many schools are taking the easy solution of simply banning it.” he said, “But I have found that students will find a way to get around most of the rules that schools impose.”
He has emphasized that Realbotix would not have access to students’ personally identifiable information, and that Sally was never meant to replace a teacher, only to sit next to one.
In Salamanca itself, opinion was divided, with some parents welcoming early exposure to AI as a route to future work and others asking why the district was purchasing a robot instead of hiring more teachers.
The department was not convinced, at least not yet, and the concerns it raised were ones that now overshadow almost any technology in the classroom: data protection, screen time, and whether the tools are ready for children.
Half of American parents They already worry that their children are too reliant on AI, and researchers have separately flagged the problem. risk for students for general-purpose AI to be incorporated into school work.
Salamanca said he would use the pause to work on improved student data privacy agreements and continue talking to parents before deciding what’s next.
For now, Sally waits. Realbotix CEO Andrew Kiguel struck a conciliatory note, saying the company wanted the program to be “demonstrably safe, fully approved by the district, and strongly supported by teachers.”
Whether or not Salamanca classrooms will receive their robot this fall is no longer the district’s responsibility to decide on its own.
