Salamanca Schools Test Silicone Robot Sally as a $57K Teaching Assistant

A rural public school district in western New York is testing whether a silicone-skinned humanoid robot belongs in the classroom. The Salamanca City Central School District has acquired Sally, a stationary robot developed by Realbotix, to serve as an artificial-intelligence teaching assistant alongside an on-screen avatar.

The pilot is launching in high school robotics and AI courses that use curriculum from Woz ED, an educational venture co-founded by Steve Wozniak. The district paid $57,590 for the package, discounted from a list price of $95,000, according to public board documents.

Sally does not walk or replace certified staff. The physical bot stays seated, using expressive facial movements and arm gestures to interact with students who sign in with personal codes. Routine tasks fall mostly to a laptop avatar, which checks homework photos, translates materials into over 100 languages, and provides lesson prompts for teachers.

To address safety and privacy concerns, administrators say the system runs entirely offline on local curriculum data. The AI is programmed to answer "I don't know" rather than hallucinate answers, and it automatically flags any student inputs mentioning violence or self-harm for staff review.

The deployment has nonetheless stirred debate in Salamanca, where about one-third of the 1,300 students belong to the Seneca Nation and nearly 80 percent come from low-income households. Compounding parent anxiety is the vendor's heritage: Realbotix built its business on hyper-realistic adult companion mannequins. The company maintains that its educational branch operates with distinct staff and proprietary tech, with a complete ownership split slated for completion by September.

District superintendent Mark Beehler defended the purchase as pragmatic preparation for an automated economy, arguing that teaching students how to engage with AI matters more than imposing ineffective classroom bans.

Source: habr