OpenAI expands ChatGPT for Teachers to 55 more US school systems and pushes free access to 2028
OpenAI added 55 school systems across 20 states to ChatGPT for Teachers on 26 August 2026 and moved the free access date for US educators to June 2028.
Photo by Yan Krukau on Pexels
OpenAI has added 55 school systems across 20 states to ChatGPT for Teachers, the free workspace it built for American K-12 educators. The company published the expansion on 26 August 2026 and said the programme now reaches more than 100 K-12 organisations in 30 states and over 300,000 educators and staff. In the same post OpenAI stated that the tool “remains a free tool for verified U.S. K-12 educators through June 2028”, a year later than the June 2027 date reported when the product launched.
The new partners include Baltimore City Public Schools in Maryland, Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Sarasota County Schools in Florida and Virginia Beach City Public Schools. OpenAI told reporters the participating systems together employ about 340,000 educators and staff serving more than 2 million students, figures carried by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in its coverage of the Kamehameha Schools partnership on the same day. The named district list published on openai.com covers 31 of the 55 systems and includes several members of the original 2025 cohort, so it should not be read as a list of new joiners alone.
What ChatGPT for Teachers actually gives schools
The product is restricted to adults. OpenAI states that ChatGPT for Teachers “continues to be available to administrators, faculty, and educators only”, and Texas Public Radio and the Star-Advertiser both confirmed that no student accounts are issued through it. Accounts are verified through a third-party check, conversations are not used to train OpenAI models by default, and administrators get workspace-level controls the company describes as supporting compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
Alongside the expansion OpenAI announced a National Data Privacy Agreement covering 16 states, signed through the Student Data Privacy Consortium. The company’s own post is internally inconsistent on this point: it names 16 states in the headline figure but then lists 15 signed General Offers, covering Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Washington, with California handled under a separate agreement. New York appears in the coverage but not in that list.
| Measure | At launch, 19 November 2025 | After the 26 August 2026 expansion |
|---|---|---|
| K-12 organisations | first cohort of 17 districts and agencies | more than 100 |
| Educators and staff covered | nearly 150,000 | more than 300,000 |
| States | not stated | 30 |
| Free access runs through | June 2027 | June 2028 |
| Student accounts | none | none |
| Multi-state privacy agreement | not in place | 16 states, via the Student Data Privacy Consortium |
Figures from OpenAI’s launch post of 19 November 2025, CNBC’s launch-day report, and OpenAI’s expansion post of 26 August 2026.
The extension of the free window is the least reported part of the announcement. CNBC reported on launch day that the product would be free “through June 2027”. The current openai.com launch page now reads June 2028 in its body text while its own page description still carries the 2027 date, which shows the page was edited rather than the terms having always been stated that way.
What teachers are using it for
OpenAI published a privacy-preserving analysis of educator usage between 1 January and 16 July 2026 in its back-to-school report. It counted more than 1.9 million messages on time-saving administrative tasks over that period, dominated by two categories.
Training sits alongside the software. OpenAI said more than 1,600 teachers, administrators and district leaders are taking part in AI Skills Jams run through OpenAI Academy with the Walton Family Foundation over summer 2026. It reported that 93 per cent of participants “said they left with something they could use again” and 96 per cent “said they planned to apply what they learned within 30 days”. Both are post-session self-reports rather than measures of classroom outcomes, and OpenAI does not publish the response rate.
One district-level result is older than the announcement suggests. Township High School District 211 in Illinois, a member of the first cohort, has reported that the share of staff at its lowest “AI-aware” tier fell from 43 per cent to 11 per cent. Government Technology reported that change in December 2025 over a 12-month window from May 2024 to May 2025, following more than 35 professional development sessions. Trade coverage of the August 2026 briefing attaches the same statistic to an eight-month window and 160 sessions. Winss could not reconcile the two accounts.
The policy backdrop districts are buying into
The expansion lands as US states move from guidance to requirement. Winss has reported that Ohio requires every school district to adopt an AI policy and that Maryland school districts face a fall 2026 deadline to adopt AI policies under new law, which is the state Baltimore City Public Schools sits in. Procurement can move the other way too: the NYC schools software freeze held as its AI policy missed the start of term.
Vendor competition has tightened over the same period. Anthropic launched Claude for Teachers, giving free access to US K-12 educators in July 2026 and opened a centrally managed enterprise tier for districts on 28 August 2026, two days after the OpenAI announcement. The gap that both companies are moving into is training rather than access: Microsoft’s 2026 AI in education report found high adoption but scarce training.
Leah Belsky, Vice President of Education at OpenAI, framed the expansion around preparation rather than productivity. “Education has always helped young people prepare for the world they’re going to inherit,” she said in the announcement.
About OpenAI
OpenAI was incorporated in December 2015 in Delaware as a non-profit research organisation, with Sam Altman and Elon Musk as co-chairs and a founding group that included Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, John Schulman and Wojciech Zaremba. Musk left the board in 2018. A for-profit subsidiary followed in 2019, and a 2025 restructuring created OpenAI Group PBC, a public benefit corporation held in part by the OpenAI Foundation. The company is based in San Francisco and Altman is chief executive.
Its education products arrived in sequence. ChatGPT Edu launched for universities on 30 May 2024. In July 2025 OpenAI became a founding partner of the National Academy for AI Instruction with the American Federation of Teachers, committing 10 million dollars over five years, of which 8 million is direct funding, towards a five-year effort to reach 400,000 K-12 educators. Study Mode, which walks a student through a problem instead of returning an answer, launched on 29 July 2025 and was later folded into parental controls, which Winss covered when OpenAI moved ChatGPT Study Mode into parental controls for teen accounts. ChatGPT for Teachers itself launched on 19 November 2025 with a first cohort of 17 districts and agencies representing nearly 150,000 teachers and staff. The August 2026 expansion is the first change to the product’s stated free period since that launch.
Sources: OpenAI; OpenAI; CNBC; Honolulu Star-Advertiser; Texas Public Radio; EdTech Innovation Hub; OpenAI; OpenAI; OpenAI; OpenAI; Government Technology
Featured image: photo by Yan Krukau on Pexels (free Pexels license).
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I specialize in sustainability education, curriculum co-creation, and early-stage project strategy. At WINSS, I craft articles on sustainability, transformative AI, and related topics. When I’m not writing, you’ll find me chasing the perfect sushi roll, exploring cities around the globe, or unwinding with my dog Puffy — the world’s most loyal sidekick.
