Maryland AI Ready Schools Act, SB 720 (2026)

State of Maryland — Senate Bill 720 (2026 Regular Session), the ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE READY SCHOOLS ACT, approved by the Governor as CHAPTER 634, signed by Gov. Wes Moore on May 26, 2026, EFFECTIVE JUNE 1, 2026. Cross-filed with HB 1057; final votes Senate 41-0, House 129-8, Senate concurrence 45-0. Full title: 'Education - Artificial Intelligence - Guidelines, Professional Development, and Collaborative.' FIVE OPERATIVE REQUIREMENTS: (1) MSDE must provide ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE GUIDANCE AND BEST PRACTICES to local education agencies, educators, parents and students. (2) LOCAL EDUCATION AGENCIES MUST CREATE POLICIES governing the use of artificial intelligence — the mandate that generated the Maryland district AI policy wave of summer 2026. (3) Establishes the MARYLAND AI EDUCATION COLLABORATIVE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN K-12 EDUCATION to study, report on and make recommendations regarding AI uses in each local school system (best-practices document due January 1, 2027; annual reports from December 1, 2027); the section creating the Collaborative is abrogated at the end of May 31, 2028. (4) MSDE must develop and publish A RUBRIC AND OTHER EVALUATIVE TOOLS to assist local school systems in EVALUATING AI TOOLS — a procurement-side requirement that is uncommon in state education AI legislation and addresses the practical problem that individual districts lack the capacity to assess vendor claims. (5) AI LITERACY must be incorporated into WORKFORCE PREPARATION STANDARDS and COMPUTER SCIENCE STANDARDS for kindergarten through grade 12 BY JUNE 1, 2027, with professional development in AI provided to educators and school leaders. COMPLIANCE CLOCK: local school systems have 120 DAYS FROM RELEASE OF THE MSDE GUIDANCE to adopt aligned policies, which secondary sources (Conduit Street) placed around SEPTEMBER 2026 for most Maryland systems. INSTRUMENT CLASS: a state MANDATE-AND-CAPACITY statute rather than a restriction — it does not prohibit or limit AI use by students or districts; it compels every district to have a policy, supplies the state-level scaffolding to write one, and builds AI literacy into the standards. DOWNSTREAM ENTRIES: Caroline County MD schools AI policy (2026) is one of the district policies adopted under this mandate; the Talbot County school board adopted another. RECONCILIATION: this entry supersedes the LegiScan stub legiscan-md-sb720, which carried a stale last_action of 'First Reading Education, Energy, and the Environment'.