US Schools Deploy AI Mental Health Chatbots for Kids With Little Oversight

School districts across the United States are quietly adopting AI-powered mental health tools such as Alongside, Sonar's chatbot Sonny, and screening platform Maro to address a severe counsellor shortage, with the national student-to-counsellor ratio standing at 372:1. These tools are being procured through standard administrative channels with minimal regulatory scrutiny, and none of the companies involved have submitted their products for clinical review. Sonny, deployed across nine districts by early 2025 and serving over 4,500 students, costs districts $20,000–$30,000 annually and relies on a small team of six staff to monitor AI-generated responses. Critics and researchers warn that the rapid expansion is occurring despite documented harms, including deaths linked to emotional attachments to AI chatbots and identified failures in crisis handling. No federal rulemaking or formal policy process has governed this rollout, raising urgent questions about parental consent, accountability, and who authorised deploying experimental tools with vulnerable children.