Dover-Sherborn Votes Unanimously to End School Year June 18, Unveils AI Guidelines

SHERBORN — May 5, 2026 — Dover-Sherborn School Committee sets June 18 as last day of school and adopts a student and staff AI use framework. All three committees — Sherborn, Dover, and the Dover-Sherborn Regional — voted unanimously to end the school year on June 18 as an early-release day, one day short of the district's 181-day standard, after three snow days pushed the original end date to June 22. Director of Educational Technology Brandon Paul, Assistant Superintendent Denny Conklin, and high school English department head Gretchen Donahue presented a traffic-light AI use framework developed at a CoSN conference in Natick in February, covering grades six through twelve, that designates Google Gemini and Notebook LM as approved student tools and prohibits entering any student personally identifiable information into AI models. The committee agreed AI should become a recurring agenda topic, with an elementary-level companion document still to come.