and to reaffirm their shared commitment to justice, dignity, and excellence in education for every student. adopted this 23rd day of April, 2026 by the He's still representing. So, all right, let's get started.
Thanks for having me here. Just one last time, if you haven't been living under a rock the past two years, odds are you've heard about something called artificial intelligence. Odds are you've also noticed the vast implications that has had on society and the planet. This school year I've observed that there's one side where people feel like
a feel like the sky is falling and then there's one side where people say AI will solve all all of our problems. Tonight I would like to give you my take which hopefully doesn't result in the sky falling. Who knows? For context, I've spent the past two years learning as much as I can about AI. I've created
my own automations and AI agents and I started the AI club at Monichachella High School alongside Miss Panic to educate students on the topic. Before I go any further, I'd like to assure you that my good buddies Claude, Gemini, and Chad Ti did not assist me in any way in making this speech.
I'd like to begin by looking at a study from MIT where scientists studied the accumulation of cognitive debt in the brain when using an AI assistant for an essay writing task. This experiment consisted of 54 people in three distinct groups. One group used large language models like chatbt to write the essay.
Another used a search engine and the third one old school brain only. You're probably wondering what that weird image is, but I'll get to that in a moment. The result the results demonstrated that the LLM users showed weaker brain connectivity and lower memory retention compared to the other two groups by 55%.
Essentially, writing is a cognitively demanding task that builds neural pathways. When students use AI in the wrong way or in excess, those pathways don't get built. In fact, when those same LLM users went to write an essay without using any assisted technology,
they couldn't re-engage at the same level as the brain only group, suggesting that those neural pathways supporting individual thought had already begun to weaken over a very short period of time. Second to our brains turning to mush, I would like to look at a study by the company Anthropic, the same company who
created the large language model Claude, which research AI's implications on labor markets. So looking at image two, the data from their research showed that AI isn't necessarily firing people immediately. It is simply closing the door to opportunities, mostly those in entry-level white collar jobs like
finance, law, and coding, maybe even schoolboard seats. Just kidding. The data shows since Chad was released, there has been a 14% drop in in the job finding rate for ages 22 to 25. Again, driven by slowed hiring, not layoffs.
Here's a photo from the article which demonstrates the theoretical and observed AI coverage in different occupational categories. Already, we see that Claude covers currently 33% of tasks in the computer and math category. Other areas alike is still growing as well. Zooming out, all this data seems
pretty scary, and it is. But that fear is what keeps people away from using AI entirely. You see, using AI can absolutely result in cognitive decline, but only if you're using it in the wrong way. One thing I actually left out of the study from MIT was that there was a
fourth round of testing where the brain only brain only essay writers came back and were then allowed to use an LLM. The results showed that their brains didn't disengage like the original GBT users did. It actually improved because they used AI as a tool on top of an already
engaged mind, not as a straight replacement for thinking. This is why it is more important than ever to educate our students on this topic. We need to teach them to use it the right way because it isn't going away anytime soon and the implications will only get bigger. If we don't start now, I believe
we're doing a disservice to our students. So, my solution is to start with the basics. Students should be informed which jobs are most vulnerable to AI. They should learn to protect their cognitive foundations. And students should be taught to prompt AI, which I know we will all do here shortly. With how the world is going, AI
should be taught more like a core subject, not a club, which is optional. Thank you. And go Mustangs. >> Impressive. Thank you so much. >> Does anyone want to follow up with that one? I don't know. Well, thank you so much.
That was impressive. >> Other other um school board superintendent or committee updates tonight. >> Um I have two things. One, um I had the honor and privilege of attending opening night last night at Western for High School Musical. And man, it was
incredible. There are over 70 students involved in that production and um including one of our student reps, Claire Curry, is in it. And um it was my mom called me today and she was like, "I cannot get over how good it was." Um so I encourage you guys to go this weekend.
I know the other schools have theirs coming up. Um but I think the arts are alive and well in ACPS and it was really beautiful to see. So I encourage you guys to go. Um, and speaking of arts, the other thing I wanted to mention is um the arts and western education, which
helps fund some of the um needs of our um various arts um in the western feeder pattern, um is looking for some new leadership. Um I guess they're having several people their kids are graduating or they're moving on. And so they came up to me last night and asked to just give them a little bump tonight. if
you're interested in getting involved to contact them because they um are doing some really amazing things and they need some more involvement. So, if you're interested uh please reach out to me and I can connect you or reach out to them directly. Uh but definitely go see the musical. It's really really fun and
really well done. And congrats to Miss Pitts at Western for a really great production. >> Any other updates? Then I will also give a shout out for the AHS musical which is um the Wizard of Oz. And actually the opening night is tonight and I missed and I'm sad about that but I will be
going tomorrow. >> Fun. >> That's a fun production. And >> you do. >> I guess I might as well shout out as well. Our opening night is tonight as well. They're doing Mamma Mia. It's awesome. So I suggest you see that as well. >> That's And what is Montichello? It's Mamame Mia. Is that >> Mama Mia? Yeah.
>> That's great. >> And you can get tickets for all of them. I think if you just go to the school website. >> The school website. That's right. >> And I think they're sold at the door. >> Or you can also >> It was full last night. So, I would encourage you to get tickets ahead of time. It was impressive.
>> Um, nothing, well, I was going to say nothing that exciting, nothing, nothing that arty, but I did, uh, I guess Bob Beard and I attended the student senate uh, meeting on Friday, which is really pretty incredible group of students. Uh I got there when uh Senator Creds uh and
rep representatives Amy Lawer and Katrina Coulson were on the panel and there was a quite a few sophisticated questions from the students and uh it was it was a very interesting uh event. I don't know if you were there. Were you
there >> if you wanted to add anything? >> Yeah, I would say it's always just an amazing experience. We've had various leaders come give presentations. I mean, especially from our legislators come and letting us talk to them and then they give like their opinions on certain
things. I know they talked about AI data centers in Virginia. I mean, a lot of people don't even know that we have the most data centers out of anywhere in the entire world and that we're experiencing some brown spots in some areas. I don't know if that's currently happening, but they said if we continue on this path, it definitely will happen. So, it's just
really interesting to get their point of views on certain topics. want to give a quick shout out to uh the track and field programs at all the high schools. So, coming up a week from this Friday and Saturday, the Dogwood Track
Classic, which has been around for generations, uh, one of the elite track meets on the East Coast outside of Pen Relays, is happening. And we've had just amazing athletes from Western and Montichello
and Alamar, as well as schools from four or five different states that'll come to UVA. So this not this weekend but next weekend. >> Thank you so much. As there's so much going on and and for those of you here and for those of you listening remotely,
there's so many ways to support your your schools, but one of the uh one of the honestly easiest ways is to support um attending uh games, um attending arts shows, and attending uh musicals, orchestra. Um, and so if you're
interested in any of those, there's a ton of information on each of the school's website. So I encourage everyone to look at that um um and support our schools in that way by supporting the the amazing work that they do and their teachers do each and every day.
Uh the next point on our agenda is 5.0 public comment and I am going to turn it over to Vice Chair Spilman um for to manage public comment. >> Thank you, Chair Berlin. Uh, we welcome public input at our schoolboard meetings. To sign up to speak during the public comment period, you can do so in
several ways. Online, sign up is available from 9:00 a.m. on the Monday of the meeting week until 2 p.m. on the meeting day. By phone, call the schoolboard clerk's office to sign up until 2 p.m. on the meeting day. In-person sign up at the meeting is available from 6:00 p.m. until the
public comment period for in-person meetings only. Please note that public comment is not received at special board meetings unless specified on the agenda. Each speaker will have three minutes to speak, but the chair with board consent may reduce this to two minutes should there be more be 14 or more speakers.
The maximum number of people or groups that may speak at a meeting is 20. If there are more than 20 people or groups who wish to speak at a particular meeting, each speaker will be assigned a number and numbers will be drawn to determine which people or groups will have the opportunity to speak. Those who do not have the opportunity to speak at
a particular meeting may sign up to speak at a subsequent meeting and or may submit written comments to the school board's consideration. Speakers should state their name, address, or voting district. Address comments to the school board as a whole, limit comments to schoolboard governance or school
division operations. Comments may not be directed to individual board members, division leadership, or staff. Provide written comments. Sorry. Provide written statements and supporting materials to the clerk. The school board will have a timer to track each speaker's time. Once
the time is up, speakers are asked to wrap up their comments. To maintain respect, please refrain from clapping or other audible forms of support. You may raise your hand instead. Debate with the school board is not allowed and the projection system is for staff presentations only. Uh we have five
people signed up tonight. The first one is Jennifer McDonald. Do I >> either one speak? Okay. >> Um, hi. I enjoyed as a teacher the AI presentation by the way. Um, hello. I am Jen McDonald and I have been a teacher
for 31 years and in Albamar County Public Schools for 24 of those years. And it has been a very disappointing and demoralizing time under the grading policy that was adopted by the county 5 years ago. These are some of my observations. First, a 50 for no work is untenable.
Students, even high achievers, have lost motivation. They see peers doing reasonably well with little effort and wonder why they should try or take away from their own free time. Grades are also inflated and do not reflect the skills that many students do or do not have. Students can pass a class with
very little effort. In fact, I have had a handful of students every year since this began pass on to the next grade without writing a single formal essay. I am not the only teacher this is true for. Many teachers in the division at the secondary level have confirmed it is also their experience. This is
egregious. Teaching students to write is the core objective of an English class. We cannot say we are a division offering rigor in good faith. Second, retests. The way we are doing it is eroding student accountability and learning. Students who study and do well the first
time are getting frustrated that students who don't work can take the test again and sometimes score even higher than the student who showed effort. Students are losing the motivation to try. Many students do not prepare anymore for assessments. They have figured out that they can take a test, determine what is on the test and
then retake it. It is a waste of time and effort both for students and teachers. I have so many students regularly retesting that I have to take part of instructional time in order to accommodate them all. This is the primary reason my classes are further behind in curriculum than they were before this policy. Students are more
interested in grades than in learning the material or skill. For many students, the only assignments they will do are those with a grade attached to them. Even if they see that it will help on the summitive, they still avoid it. It has find has made a culture where the grade is more important than the learning. Finally, no late penalties for
late work is problematic. Students often wait to do work until after the class is finished and gone over it. They're also trying to learn new skills when they haven't mastered the previous content they are trying to build upon. Having long deadlines without penalty has made it normal for students to just wait to finish work, which creates a cycle of
forever being behind and working on old assignments while new ones are assigned. It is unassign sustainable and doesn't teach them how to truly budget time. Most alarming, none of these grading policies are preparing students for the real world, much less college. Professors give zeros, don't retest,
assign late penalties. In the real world, students will have to regularly attend a job, be on time, do work completely and in a timely fashion. Because of limited time here, I emailed possible solutions to the board. Teachers are suffering moral injury by
being made to participate in this policy and students are being done a disservice. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, next I have Britney Lions. Good evening members of the school board. My name is Britney Lions and I am
a teacher at Greer Elementary in the Jack Jew District. I'm here to speak about the work happening at Greer, a title one school where many of our students face significant challenges in reading and beyond. These challenges disproportionately impact students of
color who are more likely to experience gaps in access to rigorous instruction, experienced teachers, and stable leadership. At Greer, we refuse to let that be our story. At that started all with our principal,
Dr. Steve Saunders. Under his leadership, we came together to design a system that would not fail our students. We implemented strategic grouping so every child received ongrade level instruction. Every student taught the full fifth grade curriculum. There's no
watering down and no lowering of expectations. Dr. Saunders created a culture where teachers are trusted, supported, and expected to innovate on behalf of students. Because of that, we partnered closer with our reading team through co-planning and co-eing and expanded
that same all hands-on deck approach into math. We operate as a unified team taking collective responsibility for every student and it is working. At the beginning of the year, 81% of our students scored below the 50th
percentile in oral reading fluency. Today, that number is 46%. We've cut it nearly in half. That growth is not accidental. It is the direct result of strong and stable leadership. Research consistently shows that students, especially students of color,
benefit most from that kind of leadership paired with high expectations and access to grade level content. This work began with teachers, but has been sustained and made successful because of Dr. Saunders. He trusts his staff, removes barriers, creates the conditions
for meaningful, lasting change. Because of his leadership, our students are now meeting and exceeding district averages. And we are just getting started. So I have to ask, what message does it send about equity when a leader who is driving success in a title one school is
removed while being placed in a more affluent school that is struggling? For Greer, the message is clear that it is unacceptable for Crosse to be without an astounding leader. But for Greer to be at a loss is the norm. If equity is
truly the priority, then the students who have historically been underserved should not lose the leadership that is helping them succeed. Leadership matters. Stability matters. Equity is not just about where resources are sent. It's about where they are sustained.
Greer is a communitydriven school that deserves the opportunity to continue this work without disruption. We are in a literacy crisis and failure is no longer an option. The principal panel is tomorrow and while we would strongly prefer to retain our principal, the
teachers of Gre Greer will have high expectations for who is to come. I urge you to consider what is at stake if this momentum is lost. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. >> Uh next I have Claire Lelant. >> Hi again. I'm Claire Lelant, a reading
specialist from the Rio District in Greer. I'm here again tonight to speak about Dr. Saunders removal and its impact on literacy and student outcomes. Did you know 40 I mean 54% of American adults cannot read above a sixth grade level? Students who are not reading on grade level by the end of third grade
are four times more likely to drop out of high school. It is possible for at least 95% of students to learn how to read. Our concerns about Dr. honors being moved are not just about him. They are about the systemic choices that directly impact whether students learn
to read. On a personal level, my daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia in first grade. She was still not reading by third grade. My family was fortunate enough to access support she needed, but many families rely entirely on our public schools for that. Learning to read is a basic right, and our students
at Greer deserve the support necessary to achieve it. Greer is making that happen. Last year, Greer was fully accredited. Some examples of further gains from our midyear vows data this year highlight the progress for our students are making. Kindergarten increased students
in the low-risk category by 36% outperforming the division. First grade increased low-risisk students by 20.8% compared to the 12 a.5% of division growth. Second grade is outperforming the division in every single measured
category. In fifth grade, students below the 50th percentile in spelling decreased from 45% to 25% by mid year. In oral reading fluency, fifth graders below benchmark have dropped from 81% to 36%. The achievement gap is closing with
black students reaching a 57.8% pass rate, surpassing the division's 54.5% rate. We are making these gains because we are working hard, being innovative, and having the support of a strong administrative team. That is why we are struggling with this change of
leadership. It's hard to let it go and get over it. When we know in our hearts the decision that has been made is not in the best interest of the students in our school community. Removing Dr. Saunders from Greer is like taking the engine out of one car and placing it into another and expecting the first car
to continue to function. That is not how systems work. The district should be prioritizing our most vulnerable students. Strong elementary schools lead to strong secondary schools and ultimately leads to educated, productive citizens. Teachers at Greer feel unheard. Morale has dropped
significantly. At least 10 staff members are already leaving and more are looking for other positions. We feel like no one is listening and no one cares. We feel like we are being punished. There is real concern about the stability and quality of future leadership. We want a leader of equal or greater quality than
Dr. Saunders. We are not looking for someone to simply fill a role. We also want this process to be real and our school interview recommendations to be heard and not overridden. Please hear us. This is important. As a board, you're elected to support our schools. You're elected to make good
choices for all students and you have the opportunity to make the situation right. I hope next year I'm not I'm standing in front of you saying thank you and for making Greer a priority and not saying I told you so. >> Thank you. >> We're in it to win it. are you?
>> Thank you so much. Uh, next I have Janna Bailey. Good evening. My name is Jana Bailey. I am the librarian at Greer Elementary and I reside in the Jack Dwitt district. Thank you Dr. Hos and members of the school board for allowing me to speak
with you. more Greer community members would have been here, but tonight is also the annual celebration of cultures night at Greer, one of our most treasured school events. I'm here to talk about the reassignment of Dr. Steve Saunders. As you know, Dr. Saunders has been the principal of Greer Elementary
for the past seven years. Approximately 83% of Greer students are economically disadvantaged, and the majority of our student population is black and Latina. Greer is a title one school. It is a challenging yet extremely rewarding
place to work. That is because of Dr. Saunders. He has built a community of inclusion, equity, and compassion at Greer. During his tenure, student attendance rates have increased, test scores have improved, and staff more has
stayed high. These successes are a testament to Dr. Saunders leadership. Recently, the principal of Cros Elementary announced her retirement. In contrast to Greer, approximately 17% of G Cro's students are economically
disadvantaged and the majority of Cros's population, roughly 82% is white. Crosse is not a title one school. This gives me pause when I think about the reassignment of Dr. Saunders. Rather than engage Cros Elementary School's
community in the search for replacement for their principal, it was announced that Dr. Saunders would be taking the helm, leaving the onus on Greer to search for new leadership. I find this both disheartening and confusing. The way this reassignment looks from the
outside is most unsettling. An affluent non-title one school with a majority white population has been given, in my opinion, the strongest and most effective elementary school principal in the county. In contrast, the title one majority black and latina population
school has had its leader taken away and is left to essentially start from scratch. In closing, I'd like to reference one of the guiding principles of ACPS, trust and transparency, in which the following tenants are promised. Communicate honestly, clearly, and
proactively. Build community trust in ACPS and confidence in the division's ability to help students thrive. Ensure community members feel heard, respected, and valued. Make data and information used for decision-making easily
accessible to the public. I do not feel that any of these tenants were followed in the reassignment of Dr. Saunders, nor are they reflected in the subsequent search process for a replacement. Going forward, it is my sincere hope that you change course for the inevitable
transition, as it is not too late to lead with these values in mind. the Greer community deserves that. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Um at last we have Lori Aldridge. Good evening. My name is Lori Aldridge
and I teach in the Jack Dwitt district. I'm here today to share my concerns about the decision to remove our current pres principal, Dr. Steve Saunders from Greer Elementary School and I wholeheartedly oppose this decision and
I want to explain why. I come to you as a member of two communities. First, as an educator with nearly 30 years experience across four school districts, three states, and three of them in title one schools.
And second, I come to you as a member of the African-American community. and I grew up in the African-American community in inner city Philadelphia. I earned two degrees from Penn State and I began my career in State College
Pennsylvania in a mostly white predominantly white school district. And in my early years in State College Pennsylvania, I noticed a difference in the education I was providing my students and my own education
in the early years. I in that school district, I was the only black teacher my students had for many years. And that experience, it it had me confront the inequities in education, both theirs and
my own. And it shared it shaped my commitment to ensuring that every child receives a quality education, and that's what they all deserve. So when I speak today, I speak from
experience. I speak with urgency. Greer already has a principle, Dr. Saunders. And he is doing exactly what you tasked him to do and what you say you value. And I just want to coin a term today,
justice, dignity, and equity. He is an outstanding leader who has built trust in teachers, students, and families. and he communicates clearly. He leads with purpose. He understands and helps us understand the why behind our work. So I
have to ask, why remove a leader from a title one school who's been tasked with closing achievement gaps and he is actively doing that work? Make it make sense. Why disrupt progress? And from where I stand, it raises serious
concerns. When someone is making meaningful change and when they are pushing systems to do better, it can make others feel uncomfortable. But that's not a reason to remove them. It's a reason to support them. And I want to be clear, the decision to remove our
principal rests with you, the board. As the board, you are responsible for ensuring the leadership decisions serve the best interests of the students rather than undermine them. You are responsible for transparency and you are responsible for standing behind what is
right even when it's uncomfortable. So I urge you to reconsider your decision. >> Thank you so much. Thank you for everyone's public comment this evening. >> The next item on our agenda is the appro approval of our consent agenda. Do I have a motion on the approval of our
consent agenda? I move we approve the consent agenda. >> Second. >> Moved by Miss Lee, seconded by Mr. Beard. All those in favor of tonight's consent agenda? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Tonight's consent agenda clearly passes.
The next item on our agenda is our last um fiscal 27 budget adoption. Good evening. Um my name is Mazawa, director of budget and planning and this evening um I'm here to support you all in the adoption of the fiscal year
202627 school board's budget. Um to begin I wanted to bring it back to the strategic plan which is where we started the budget process. The FY27 budget supports and is in alignment with
ACPS's strategic plan mission um to end the predictive value of race, class, gender, and special capacities for our children's success through highquality teaching and learning for all. We seek to build relationships with families and communities to ensure that every student succeeds.
While this has been another challenging budget process, I think you will agree that this budget meets the um adopted budget goals. And just as a reminder, I just wanted to share those again. First, plan, prepare, and implement a fiscally responsible budget that provides the
resources necessary to support the mission. Second, engage community members, including parents and guardians, teachers, staff, business leaders, volunteers, civic organizations, and the community in the development of budget priorities. Third, provide a salary and benefits plan that
supports the division's competitive position and reflects market adjustments where necessary. Fourth, develop and maintain a responsive and systematic approach to building and grounds maintenance, technology services, transportation operations, child
nutrition services that reflects industry best practices and ensures long range financial stability. Fifth, new budget proposals will align with the strategic plan and schoolwork priorities. And finally, schools, departments, and
strategic proposals will incorporate logic models and/or performance measures to support decisions that align with the division strategic plan with a goal of using metrics as a management and decision-making tool during the budget process.
In particular, um I think this budget process has truly focused on community engagement more so than others. Um we heard from um those groups listed in the budget goal from parents, guardians, teachers, staff, business leaders, volunteers, civic organizations, and the
community. And our budget priorities were developed based on that. So this is an overview of the FY27 proposed revenues. I just want to focus on um the main categories here, which are the local transfer, the state
revenues, and onetime use of fund balance. So the first line represents the changes of the local transfer looking back at the current year's FY26 adopted budget. Um the FY27 requests approved by you all and then what's being proposed here this evening. Um as
you can see uh the board supervisors has approved um a decrease of $6.4 million in the local transfer. Um but to pull it out into the greater perspective, the change from the adopted budget FY26 is a $9 million increase or 4% increase um
that we are very appreciative of to have that increase in our local transfer. The second piece is the increased revenues from the state. Um it is an additional 11.8 million. As a reminder, this is largely a restoration from the spike in
the LCI, which we estimate of the 11.8 ate about $10 million as restoration. So, it really is a modest increase um from the state when you compare the um pre LCI spike to now. And then
finally, the 3.15 million in the use of fund balance is recommended as part of the FY27 budget as discussed previously. In total, the budgettobudget change is an increase of $23.9 million or about
8%. On the expenditure side, I'll show um a summary in a few different ways. The first one is um what's changing when you compare the adopted budget from this year to next year's proposed budget. So, this is a visual representation of the level of investment in each of the
categories that we have reviewed. The first is a $4.2 million increase and non-discretionary increases. That would include things like healthcare and inflation. um $4.3 million in new school costs to operate um Ace Academy at Lamb's Lane and Mountain View Upper
Elementary School. $7.8 million in increased compensation investments in alignment with the collective bargaining agreement, $4 million in working conditions improvement, also per the agreement. And then um in order to get to a balanced budget, we did have to
propose $2.8 million in reductions. Um, but now we could accommodate $3.3 million in new proposals. And just as a um a scale reference, 3.3 is about 1% of the entire budget in new programming. So
the total FY27 operational budget is 305 million with one-time expenditures of 3 million. That's $20.7 million in recurring new investments that um is proposed here this evening. The strategic priorities that we heard
from the school board and the community are shown here. Um we're investing in um programming at scholar studios at Lambslane which will open next year. We're maintaining our small class sizes. Uh we're increasing the recurring investment in our instructional
resources into the future. We're expanding our services for math intervention in our schools. And we're adding positions to support our special education services. Um over the last three years, including this budget, um we're looking at $10
million in permanent service reductions to balance the budget. Um as an indication of your fiscal stewardship and getting to a balanced budget um this evening. And then this is the summary of how those expenditures are broken out. And you can see this um truly aligns with
our strategic plan. Um we're investing 70% of our budget in instruction. You can see some examples of where that money is going. Um, other categories include transfer, transportation, building services, technology and
administration, attendance and health. So this evening um you will uh are planned to adopt this FY27 budget. Um but I will be back um because the state budget has yet not been released. Um, so we will come back in May um to provide
updates on the state budget. So with that, I'll turn it over to the chair, Dr. Berlin. >> Thank you so much. Before we move f forward, I just wanted to see if we have any questions about the budget. Any comments um individuals would like to
make? >> Next, please. When it says spending on resources, specifically textbooks, does that literally mean like real physical textbooks that we would buy or like online resources? >> Question. >> Both. >> Both.
>> Yes. But we we have um completed uh curriculum adoption like to pick textbooks um for several subjects and so those funds will go towards the purchase of those as well as some online materials. >> Okay. Thank you. And and I was just going to say um Max when I had the
opportunity to join I think it was student senate um one of the things we heard I heard um particularly um from some of our high school students was um the need for physical books right in
textbooks as well as as as books in the um English literature. Um, and so I think one of the things, you know, we know we need to, you know, right now we've made a huge investment in in computers and software technology, but we also know, um, that we need to
replenish, um, textbooks. And I think one of the things you'll see over time is us beginning to look at all this research that you're talking about regarding, you know, screen time. We know we've made an investment. we that's how we're teaching right now, but what
do we need to do going forward? And so this that piece was making sure we also had some of those those textbooks for some of those adoptions in in middle school and high school that we needed. >> Okay, awesome. I thank you for recognizing that. I only because I I only wanted to ask because whenever I think of like a textbook, I think only
like those those big bulky things and I'm like I flip through them and I don't know what I'm reading. But so that also includes like school books like for English classes as well. >> Yeah. >> Okay, perfect. Thank you. Thank you so much. Questions, comments? I know we've had lots of questions and
lots of comments. Um, but this is the time to to lift anything up. >> No, I think I think Miss Kumazawa and her team have answered I don't know how many dozens or hundreds of question. >> What's the number? >> 2002. >> 202. >> So, not that she's keeping track.
>> Every every permutation of question we can, I believe. >> Thank you for the responses. >> Make sure you write that. that will be on our trivia night. >> Need a motion? >> Yes. If if I do not see any more questions or comments, um I need a
motion for the approval of our um our budget. The language is in front of you. And I know this is one that um no one wants to do because you have to show your um your you have to go back into your math literacy to make sure you read your commas, right? Yeah, >> I move to adopt the FY2627
schoolboard budget of 308,67,157 for the school fund and 33,000 33,700,221 for special revenue funds. >> Good job. >> Second. >> I do want to do uh I don't think I've mentioned this to to Miss Thompson ahead of time, so I apologize. I would like to
do a voice vote for this. >> Yes. >> Um moved by Dr. Auff, seconded by Miss Lee. Miss Os Miss Osborne is absent this evening. Miss Filman, >> yes. >> Dr. Auff, >> yes.
>> Mr. Beard, >> yes. >> Mr. Dillanbeck, >> no. >> Miss Lee, >> yes. >> Chair Berlin, >> yes. with a vote five one with one absent. The motion carries.
>> Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Maya. >> Thank you for um thank you to everyone um for all of your work. Thank you to the community for all of your input. Um I think this is re is the record um both I heard I listened to the the board of
supervisors. They had record attendance at their town halls. Um and was many many ahead of um questions before. So, um, a huge thank you for all the work you've done. And I just a tiny token, um, of thank you, um, for Miss
Kumazawa over here. >> I should have got you 202 for all the questions. I hope you can get a little bit of sleep and maybe have a Thursday evening to yourself before you need to come back. So, thank you very much.
The next uh we will now be moving into our school division work session. Um uh this was targeted very well um by our school representative. We are talking about artificial intelligence in Alberark County. Jamie Foreman, deputy
chief technology office. Clay Todd, assistant director of technology integration are going to introduce this to us and I know they have a team coming forward um that they will also introduce. Um so we will be spending um time together uh to learn about both
our policies and how AI is used within our school system. So for those of you listening um just a reminder that this is a work session so it'll just seem a little bit different. We will I believe there will be a presentation and then we will be working
um probably in in small groups. >> Oh we do not have a break. >> We have one. It's on here. It's just not on It is scheduled. >> Oh, sorry. Did I Did I break on this? >> Oh, let's take Yeah, everyone's looking
at me like we need a break. So, I apologize. Is it a 10-minute break? >> Yeah. Okay, we are going to do a 10-minute break. Um, and we will come back at 8:05. Sorry about that, team. >> What? And I'm going to welcome again um our
work session on artificial intelligence in Albert County Public Schools, Jamie Foreman, Clay Todd, and I ask that you introduce the rest of your team. We're excited to work with you tonight. >> Absolutely. Thank you all so much for having us. I really appreciate your time tonight. It's a topic that we're all
very passionate about. Um and I especially want to thank uh Max for for his uh excellent segue into this. Um, I think you're going to find that we all align on your thinking here. Um, it's a
big topic uh that's uh disrupting schools but also presenting a lot of opportunities. Uh, and we're going to talk a bit about that today. Um, before though I introduce myself. I'm going to actually let my team step up and introduce themselves. >> Hi, I'm Megan Panick. I am the LTI at
Monichello High School and Walton Middle School. Good evening. I'm Monica Kabarcus. I am the secondary English language arts career coordinator at K12 libraries. >> Hi everyone. I'm Katie Bro. I am the LTI at Greer Red Hill and ACE Academy
Seminal Place. >> Will you remind everyone um uh what LTI stands for just for those? >> I would love to. >> Oh, okay. Is that part of your presentation? Okay. >> LTI stands for learning technology integrator. uh these are folks who are out in buildings uh helping teachers to
think purposefully about technology integration. So you can imagine around the topic of AI in particular, this has been a very uh important uh topic of discussion for our team and a lot of the resources that you're going to see tonight have been created by by our team. Um so hi everybody. I'm Klay Todd,
assistant director for technology integration and I supervise the learning technology integrator team. Uh they are an awesome group of people that do exactly what I just shared. Um I do want to start tonight very very briefly. Um I know it's late with a story. Um
technology for me uh is a topic that is more than just a job. Um I grew up in a house where uh my father was a professor of James Madison University.
uh he uh his one of his primary areas of research was the effects of electronic media that was the term back when before he was retired uh on childhood obesity rates. Uh you can imagine that my house was very interesting when it comes to
electronic media. Um I grew up uh without a lot of access. Um, our television had a box on it that had a little punch code and you would punch in your code and it would let you watch TV for half an hour and then it would shut off and you couldn't get back on for the rest of the day. Um, so I I I grew up in
a house where we were uh taught to think about our technology use and reflect on it. Um, but I also loved technology. I'm a gamer. Um, I no doubt love it. I work in the field. Um, I say that and I
shared this with family council a couple years ago because I think it's important that you all understand and that our families here that there are folks in this school division that believe in the power of technology but also understand its impacts when it's
not used well. Um, I've heard a couple schoolboard meetings where we've been reflecting on that. Um, and we're going to talk a little bit about that today. Um, but I just want you I want you to hear that because I want you to know that within our Department of Technology, those folks making those decisions around our technical
infrastructure, you have folks who are advocating for our kids and for instruction. Um, and we want to partner with you as you continue to think about, um, the impact that it's having in schools. Um, so with that, um, tonight
we're going to kind of take a two-prong approach. We're going to talk a little bit about tech in ACPS and the why behind it. And that's going to lead us a little more naturally into uh our approach to AI. And then we're going to kind of shift and do a professional learning session uh that some of our
school administrators had the opportunity to experience just so you all get sort of a taste of what they learned about including some of the resources we've developed as well as um the opportunity to learn about what AI can do for you. Um we will have time at the end for hands-on exploration. Um
again, we're replicating experience that was done for school administrators. So, I'll kind of leave it up to you how hands-on we really want to get with that. I know it's late. Um, but when we get there, I'll describe the activity and you all can decide uh what works best for you tonight.
As far as our strategic plan um tonight, this topic really falls under all three goals. Uh thriving students um in the sense that uh students uh live in a digital world. We know this um and tech
can help or hinder. It's all in how we use it. Uh affirming and empowering communities in that technology uh is presents opportunities to bring our community in and to connect students with those in our community. again when done well and equitable and
transformative resources. Uh thinking through uh how technology can be transformative in the classroom but also how it can be used when used well to close achievement gaps. So we're going to talk a little bit about tech in school. So first off is
why why do we have access to technology in our buildings? Um technology can be an an accelerant or a decelerant in the classroom. It all depends on how it's used. um when it's integrated well, it supports digital literacy, including AI
literacy. So, skills um that students need to have to succeed in the world because technology is a part of our everyday lives. Uh workforce readiness, uh the different skills specific to the job or career that a student might uh
choose. Uh accessibility of learning materials and resources. Some examples of this might be uh our we have a new tool called read and write which does some read aloud for students. Um it allows students to do some voice dictation. Some of our students even have this in their IEP. Um digital
citizenship skills. Digital citizenship is exactly what it sounds like. It is being a citizen in digital spaces. So what does it mean to be kind online? what does it mean to understand what misinformation looks like and be able to to to parse through that. Um there is
also uh this is new to this slide deck as of tonight. Uh new legislation that just came through. You may or may not have heard uh around uh instructing around the uh addictive qualities of technology that we are going to need to wrestle with over the next um couple
years. uh we need to develop resources around that and helping students to think through uh what healthy media use looks like for them and also understand the ways in which technology can not always but can be developed to uh encourage addictive behaviors because we
want to bring students back to those platforms that you know keep making money right um delivery of content and assessment our so tests on just on a basic level are taken with technology so we want to make sure that our students are prepared when it comes comes to assessment time to um access those
platforms that are needed uh to take their tests and do well on those tests. Um and then finally, the VODE, if you're not familiar, actually does have standards around technology integration. They're called the digital learning integration standards. Uh they are currently about to be revised. Um, and
these sort of govern what good technology use in the classroom looks like and what those digital literacy skills are that students need to take away uh when they graduate. Um, so for all these reasons and more, um, we believe it's important that students do
have access to technology. Um, but tonight I want to then kind of shift to some other questions around well, what is it that that they're doing? Um and how are we uh helping uh students and staff to think through technology use in a way that is accelerating right and not
decelerating. So what uh technology do students have access to? Our K2 students have iPads um at a 1:1 ratio and the decision around iPads is specific uh to developmental needs. Um students are not keyboarding
at that age yet. uh it's a more limited environment in terms of what students can get to. Uh and then by the time into third grade, we see in some of our standards those keyboarding skills coming in uh and we start to just scaffold up uh towards a more workforce
ready uh platform which is in our case a Windows laptop. Um all of our classrooms also have interactive displays. Um these are meant to be collaborative. They're more than just a projector. They allow students to get up together um and and work on a display. Uh they also allow the teacher to uh have a a higher degree
of interactivity so that they're not tethered to the front of the classroom in the same way that they might be with just a projector and then a document camera. So that's what you can expect to see if you were to walk into a a classroom. Um in terms of resources that are currently available, um up here
you'll see uh the majority of our guaranteed viable curriculum. Uh there may be one or two things uh missing from this list but uh these are the curriculum resources that we would expect students to be engaging with when they are on technology. Um there are
also a vast array of other supplemental resources that are available to students. Um and these are used at teacher discretion. Um they are vetted uh through a set of criteria that I'll share with you in just a moment. Um but you can see that list of resources at
resources.ck12. cake12.all.org. Um, we had a question from Camp Family Council that um, I think some folks here were also interested in, and that is what resources are used for intervention. Um, and you can see those here as well. Um, if you're a family member watching tonight and you're not
sure which resources your child is using, the best thing you can do is ask their teacher or their case manager. Okay. And now the the million-dollar question. How much time do students spend on technology in school? My answer for this is um I don't mean it as a
copout. I mean it honestly and that is that it depends. Uh it depends on the course. The difference between being in a CTE computer science course is going to be very different than being in a band classroom, right? Um so the best thing you can do to know exactly how much time is being spent on technology
in a classroom is to check with the with the teacher. um they know their classroom, they know their instruction best of all. Um I do want to note um around research that uh there's a lot of research out there about screen time. Um
and that research is has been conducted in a lot of different ways. Some studies look at screen time in a very broad sense. Screen time period. I'm on a screen. What is the effect it has? Some studies look at what is actually happening while on a screen.
Um, and what has been found with those studies, I'm going to share there actually a couple linked there at the bottom for you, um, is that the quality of what a student is doing on a screen is, uh, more indicative of outcomes than the quantity of time. So, it's an important
question to ask, what are kids doing? Um, we are we aim uh for our screen time to be high on what we call the edtech triangle, uh, which is a framework for technology integration. I'm going to share with you uh momentarily. Um for families listening tonight, um it
is important to have conversations and to co-view with your kids. Um if you know they're going to watch you're going to watch a movie at home, watch it with them. Talk about what they saw. If you're uh going to allow your child on social media, uh be having conversations with them about what they're doing on
social media. These are very important things and studies show that when we actually are having conversations about what is happening on those devices, that's what leads to more positive outcomes. Um we also have a digital citizenship curriculum uh that is designed to help students reflect on
their own tech use um in school including both the quality and the quantity of time spent. Uh students even there are lessons where students take an inventory of that. Um, and then finally, as I mentioned, you have LTI's out in buildings prepared to work with teachers and families around the healthy
integration of tech. Um, I want to point to a little bit of research here. Uh, the American Academy of Pediatrics actually just a couple months ago released their new guidelines around screen time. Um, and they conducted they arrived at these guidelines through their own studies and
also through some meta analyses of other studies. Um, and these were kind of their top three conclusions. Um, one is that students do have a right uh to devices um that they are going to be going into a world where they have to use them and so we should be teaching
about that in school. Um, also the lack of access to a device they have found exacerbates um inequalities, right? And that some students this at home while others may not. And so it's important that in school we are addressing healthy, thoughtful technology use. Um
they talked about just kind of what I was mentioning before um which is that we want to move the conversation from quantity to context. Uh so really what are kids doing? So instead of asking how many minutes, we want to ask how it's being used. Um and then we want to
differentiate between active and passive screen time. So passive screen time, which we all engage in, it's not that it's a bad thing. It's just that we want to think about when we're doing it. That's screen time for entertainment's sake. That's um playing mindless games.
That's um watching TV. That's again not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm not actively engaging with an experience in those cases of screen time. Um active screen time looks like I'm doing something with a technology that uh is
involving me in some way. Uh you're going to see some examples of things that have happened out in buildings, but um an example might be uh coding. I'm actively creating something. I'm programming. An example might be developing a presentation. Uh it might
be collaborating with peers over a Google doc. Very different than uh just simply writing on my own. They also focused on the three C's. This is new in their uh guidelines. Uh the first is context. So when we're thinking
about screen time in context, we want to think about the details in which technology is being used or implemented. What is the context of the screen time experience? And in the case of school, this looks like the instructional task, right? So what is what is it that we're asking kids to do and what is what are
the parameters around that? Second is content. Um so it's we want to make sure that families, teachers have a clear understanding of what students are actually learning, right? Um we don't want it to just be you know, free time on on the iPad. We want it to be we understand the content that we're
delivering. In the case of school, this is our learning targets. Uh and then the last is control. And we're not saying, you know, control our students, but what this really means is what are what are the parameters being put in place to allow us to manage the learning environment when technology is being
used. Uh you're going to hear some examples in just a moment of some of what that can look like. So to reframe the question about how much time the important question to ask is what are students doing? Now I don't ask this
this question to say that we shouldn't pay attention to quantity of time. Uh there are studies there is emerging research to say especially for very young children. We're talking prior to kindergarten the screen time does have an effect um on uh cognitive ability.
Um, we still want to be paying attention to the research, but we also want to make sure that we're not just looking at it from a quantity perspective, but what are kids doing? What are kids doing? And now to speak of some things that
kids are doing here in our schools, I'm going to invite Katie up to share a little bit about an example in our elementary school. >> All right. So hopefully as you maybe already know a majority of our elementary schools do have student broadcast teams. So these are typically
fourth and fifth grade students. Some of our schools get started a little bit younger where the students are working with a teacher mentor to create the daily news. So they are getting to interact with all the different components of a news crew. Some of them are writing the script. Some of them are
doing the actual filming and some of them are on camera and it gets streamed to the entire school. Um, so that's a technology we use is called Wii video. Um, but that's one example of how we are doing that in the elementary setting and
I believe Megan is gonna talk about middle and high school. >> Yeah, I've got >> Oh, sorry. That's okay. Actually, the uh LTI that supported this project was honored tonight um as uh one of our licensed staff of the year, but I wasn't
going to make him stay until 10, so I let him go. Um so, uh this is a project that recently happened at Lakeside where um students in a computer science course were working with Arduinos, which is a if you're not familiar, it's it's a microcontroller um and it can be programmed uh to create and control all
sorts of different things. And so in this case it was um I think we were near Halloween and students made animatronics. Um but through making animatronics uh they were using their devices uh to actually code how these animatronics
were going to move. Um so great uh highlevel use of uh technology in that case and Megan's going to share about one of our high school experiences. So, at the high school level right now, we have about 30 Oculus that can travel around to any of the um secondary
schools in the division. Um and this year, we just started being able to use them with middle schools, but we've been primarily using them at the high school level. Students have been able to travel to all different locations um all around the world and even beyond the world. They've gone to the International Space Station um to the Freda Ko Museum in
Mexico City. Most recently, just a few weeks ago, I got to take seventh graders to um Anne Frank's annex in Amsterdam. So, these devices really allow students to feel like they are in these locations, like they are experiencing these locations. Um and when that
happens, we also after they finish the experience often do reflections. And when we pair kind of the experience with the reflection afterward, it really does help the learning stick. And so I mentioned uh a bit ago, how do we know h how do we know that the
technology experience with screen or otherwise is having an impact? Um and the framework that we've recently adopted, we used to use a different one called SAM. You may have heard of it, but we switched um to something called the EDT edtech triangle about a year
ago. And what this basically shows us is it allow it gives uh staff a framework to think about when students are on screens, what is the role that technology is playing. We're aiming for the top of that pyramid. And what we're looking for are examples of technology
integration where we are producing a high a unique outcome developing some kind of highlevel skill. Um in particular, I think about the animatronic example I just gave you. That's giving students students are coding. They are engaging in those computer science standards. Um they are
making things happen. There's excitement. There's engagement. Technology is doing something to the learning that would not have happened without it. Um supportive. These are places where technology is supporting the curriculum. Um some examples of this
might be some of our uh digital curriculum resources. it's uh functionally improving it uh by maybe a smaller margin than a true transformative experience, but it's still doing something uh that would not be achieved without it. There's there's
a little kickup, so to speak, a plus one. Um an example of this could easily be uh using Seesaw where students are sharing their learning with others. So maybe I I did a project, I took a picture of it, I posted it in Seesaw, and now my family can see it and other
families can see it and we can uh we can we now have authentic audience, right? So the technology is just it's it's adding a plus one. Um restrictive uh this is when technology is not functionally changing anything, but it's not also functionally like hurting anything. It's just kind of standing in.
An example of this for us might be email, right? uh we could write memos back and forth to each other and stick them in our mailboxes, but uh email is is it's just a little easier. Um but it's not fundamentally changing what we're doing. And in a learning capacity, uh if I'm just putting my responses in
Google Docs, um it it's easier for the teacher, it's maybe for some students, it's it's easier for them if they like to type. Um but it's not fundamentally changing anything about the learning. And you'll notice there um that I I noted that restrictive
tasks sometimes increase efficiency um but they don't change the learning itself. And so with teachers we we we like to think through that because we want to ask that question. Is the technology bringing something positive to the learning experience or is it just making it easier for us which is not
necessarily a bad thing. um teachers have a lot to do and so sometimes yes it is appropriate for uh technology to um make their lives easier so that they can focus on the learning experiences. Um but those are those are restrictive examples and the reason that we switched
to the edtech triangle is that it includes the category of disruptive. Um the previous model we used did not um we know that technology when not used well can take away from the learning. it can
be a distraction. It can um take our focus away from what we should be doing in school. Um so we want to make sure that there's a category reserved for that. And this is that technology for entertainment. Now that's not saying technology for entertainment is bad. I'm not telling you all to go throw your
televisions away. Um but in school we want to make sure we are avoiding this category. And an example of it might be using uh technology as free time. So, what's in place? I mentioned our LTIs already um are there to help staff.
We have our digital citizenship curriculum which I brief briefly mentioned um and this hits six categories that you can see there. I'm not going to hit all of them. And we also have a family field guide which accompanies that curriculum and that goes home to families to help them have
conversations at home regarding technology use. You can see it there. I should note that that is under revision and almost done and we'll probably launch in the fall. So you you may see a broken link or two there um as we uh continue to revise that document, but it
is aligned directly with that digital citizenship curriculum. And finally, this is a new program for us. It's called Lightseed Classroom Management and it gets at that that uh control when we talk about the three C's. Uh this is a program that we've that teachers now have access to um that allows them to
see student screens. It also allows them to sort of manage that technology environment in the classroom through different uh functions like allow lists where we only allow certain resources through through block lists where maybe we're blocking certain resources that we know are maybe a particular distraction
that day. Um and we're continuing to provide uh professional learning and whatnot on how to use lightseed classroom management. And then finally um around general technology use uh what are we doing to keep kids safe? Um we have a firewall
and a web filter. Those sort of work in tandem with each other. The firewall kind of looks at all the incoming traffic and says this is an unsafe thing or this is a this is a security risk. And then sitting behind that is the web filter. and the web filter we're allowed
to we are able to more granularly um allow certain things through or block certain things based on grade level uh that sort of thing. Um I should note that filters are not perfect. Um they are actually maintained by a third party
company in terms of uh what's on that list. We can customize it and we do constantly. We're adding things. We're removing things uh based on things that happen out in the field and on feedback. Um, but it is it does happen that occasionally something might get through. Um, and we have uh our LTI's
help teachers think through how to handle those situations. So, close your computer, raise your hand, get a teacher, those sorts of things. um our resource vetting process. Um the resources that you see on the resource library um have all gone through this and that's where we vet our resources,
our technology resources for instructional value and we partner with our department of instruction on that. Um for safety and security of student information. That's one thing we haven't hit today is the federal laws governing that and that's a whole other presentation. But um we do check to make sure that these tools are compliant with
those regulations and that student data is not at risk. um redundancy and compliance with our existing systems. So, we don't want to be buying stuff that doesn't work with the stuff that we have or we've already got a tool that does this really well. We don't need to spend money on another one. Uh and then finally, uh keeping
students safe. We have the responsible use policy. Um there's one for both students and staff that governs what appropriate use looks like. And we actually revised this, oh gosh, it's been a year now um to include more studentfriendly language around what responsible use looks like. There's the
data governance policy which uh governs the way that we handle student data and then to transition uh the AI policy which is new um that governs our use of AI. If you go see that policy well you all have seen that policy because you approved that policy um it is uh
relatively general right now because AI is changing so quickly. Um so it does a lot of referencing of other policies and that is the first part of our presentation. So before we move into AI, I'm curious if you'all have any questions.
>> Clay, at what grade level are students taking devices home? >> That's a good question. Uh they start taking home in middle school. >> Yes, our elementary students leave devices at school. >> Okay, >> questions.
I yeah >> just just remind me the training for LTI you have both certification in education and in technology. >> That is correct. Our LTIs are licensed teachers um and they need to have been in the classroom for at least 5 years.
So they need to have had that experience to have that empathy for what teachers experience and go through. Um but then we have um our our LTI's go through a certification program um through Visty, the Virginia Society for Technology and Education, who actually um if you don't
know, Katie runs that program for the state. Um we've got a star in the house here. Um so that prepares them for some of the there's there's no college degree to be an LTI. It is a state required position. Um but the the training for
that um we have to provide in-house. So we do a lot of onboarding. Um there's also a lot of technical components to being an LTI. You have to understand the way technology works and able to advise the department um around the instructional um impacts of the
decisions that we make. Um so there's there's a lot of on the job learning around how a filter works and how different systems work and all that sort of thing. So yeah a >> and beyond like individual working with
teachers I do you provide some professional development sort of generally in the >> for the summer the division at large >> correct >> yes we do so uh we tailor it based on the need at the time an example would be AI uh last year we gave pre-ervice PD
around AI to all staff um so yes that does occur but it's on an as needed basis um we actually recently developed a professional learning technology professional learning plan that that addresses um the different needs. Um another example would be anytime we onboard a new system um LTI needs to
understand that system and then develop the training for that system or the professional learning for that system. Uh Lightseed was a great example. We're about to on board a new communication system. So um the LTI's have been in the room through the selection process for that and will help develop that professional learning for teachers and
staff. >> Thank you. Other questions? >> I No, I was just gonna say I thought the use of the um Oculus was really cool. Like I would have loved that as a kid to be able to
go to an Frank's annex. Um >> is that um mainly towards elementary school or is it across all >> specifically the VR? >> Yeah. >> Uh we have it against there are the experience is different across grade levels. Um Megan mentioned Oculus.
That's a very sort of robust high-end headset that can do a lot. It's got controls. Uh we do have it in elementary as well, but it's more of a seated experience. They pick it up, they hold it there, they put it down. We want to make sure it's not strapped to their face, you know, developmentally. Uh that's important, but but yes, it is
available across all grade levels. It's just the experience varies. >> And how do teachers get to use that exper? I mean, do they sign up for it? Do they >> reach out to they reach out to their LTI um and the LTI it it varies by interaction. Um in some cases the LTI
might come in and model the lesson and deliver the lesson for the teacher and a teacher that's done it a couple times and had that experience. We might just check out it's really fun actually. They're in a suitcase. So you see the LTI's going around with suitcases in school. They might check out the suitcase and and drop it off. Just depends on the
>> the context. >> Yeah. Three C's. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. I was just going to say I appreciate the context that you gave us because I know we asked for AI but like I think >> helping us understand how this fits within the broader instruction particularly broader instruction around
technology >> um is important as well as the triangle because again I think it's important of like how do you balance y >> um what is >> like high quality high content with something that's just like repetitive use. >> Yes. >> Yes. Absolutely.
>> Yeah. And having raised four kids and taught high school for a number of years, I recognize the fact that young people are extremely sharp and creative >> and can often figure out ways to get
around firewalls and such. It I'm guessing because technology is changing so quickly, you guys have to be really on the ball to keep up with the changes. And >> is must be sort of an ongoing evaluation
of how will light speeded actually work. >> I call it a dance. We're dancing all the time with with with the kids, right? Like they are figuring stuff out and we're responding. Sometimes we're ahead of it, but it is Yes, we have to be responsive because technology is changing >> all the time. >> Yeah. >> And not everybody's as responsible as
Max. >> No. No. >> I guess >> Max is quite responsible as a as we saw tonight. >> I guess that begs the question then. Are do you have students involved in like letting you know what the new like >> VPN might be or like whatever? Because I
know as the mom of teenagers, I ran into that with my oldest where he was like, "It's okay. I used your credit card to get a VPN." I was like, "I'm sorry, what?" Um, >> never mind. I'm on school board. Um, so I'm just curious, you know, they seem to always be one step ahead of us. Um, how
are the students involved in letting you know what the >> So, we do seek student feedback on occasion. I was at a talking about AI actually at a student council meeting recently, but I would say that our LTI are actually really crucial to that because they are out in buildings with students, right? And so they they have
their ear the ground and they're able to bring back to us as a department like what specifically is going on, what sort of tweaks and things we need to make. So, yeah. >> Great. Thank you. Mhm. >> Hey, I noticed that uh this week Los Angeles is banning
>> iPads, I believe, in K1. >> I'm wondering, talk about the iPad use in in K1 and ACPS. >> What do kids do with it? What do they use it for? >> That's a very good question. >> What do you think about the banning? >> Uh that's a that's a loaded question.
um what they're doing with it in my observations. Uh K2 and I would actually like to hear from our instructional leadership on this as well. Um not putting on spot tonight Dr. Hayes, maybe another time, but um I it should be tied to curriculum, right? It should be those
if we're on HMH, we're using those digital components of HMH when appropriate. And sometimes we're not using those digital components. Um it it should be tied to curriculum. um we do have, you know, examples of some of those higher level learning experiences, um that we might see use of, but that
would be the other use we'd like to see. So, an example might be if you've heard of Scratch before, there's a a kid-friendly version of Scratch, which is like an introductory coding program. Um, and it they they sort of teach the the cat to to do certain things and jump around the screen. And I've seen like
literacy tie-ins where we're retelling stories that we've learned about by programming characters to do certain things. So, we'd like to see a lot of that as well. Um, as far as the bands go, um, I I think we need to look at the research. >> Thank you. >> And that's the answer I'm going to give
you. >> I do actually have a followup on that just for Dr. Hayes just for kind of for later is I am interested in finding out and we talked about this a little bit last time is, you know, we know that there are um curriculum components that are that are embedded in the that are
embedded in the curriculum like you mentioned for technology. So I would be interested in just understanding on the just on the K2 level K one and two um I don't I'm trying to have to think about what the question is but like like the proportion maybe of HMH and KDM
activities or follow-up activities that are coming through an iPad versus um uh paper and pencil or books. So that you know you know is it is it that the majority of those KDUm and HMH activities that are being done are
actually you know like more three to five or or how many are really in that K2 because I think you know that's something we'll I think we'll be looking at going forward. >> Thanks. >> I think if seeing other questions if
you're ready to go for move into AI and more the exciting stuff. Okay. So, AI in ACPS. Um, as I mentioned, what you're going to see today is a presentation that has been given to our school administration. So, I'm just giving you that context ahead of time in case
anything feels like why are we learning about this specifically. It's through that frame. Okay. But we want you I I felt it was important that you all have the opportunity to hear what our leadership is hearing about as you are also leaders in our school division. Um,
as we all know, AI is one of the most pressing uh issues right now in our classrooms and frankly in our communities. Um, and Max spoke about data centers. Uh, this is this is a real thing and it's not going away. So, we can't bury our heads in the sand about it, but we we need to address it and we
need to address it in a way that's measured um and balanced. So, I'm going to turn it over briefly to Megan to talk a little bit about what AI is um to lay a foundation for us. >> So, AI really is not new. Um it has
existed for a long time. It's the type of AI that has changed pretty dramatically in the last few years. We've had traditional what we call assistive AI for a long time. So assistive AI is those kinds of machines that run on an algorithm, right, that interpret data and help us make
decisions. If you have an Alexa in your home, if you have Siri on your phone, if you have Netflix that recommends um different things that you can watch, this is AI. It's been in our lives for a long time. Um does anybody know what happened on November 30th of 2022 that
changed everything? >> Max knows.2. Yeah. >> Is that what Chad GBT covers? >> Chad GPT was released to the public November 30th of 2022. So, it's only been about three years um since really the ground started moving underneath our feet. Um generative AI was that really
brought generative AI to the public. Um these are tools now that don't just interpret data and help us make decisions, but they create entirely new content. So generative AI can create something completely new from all of the patterns and all of the data that it has
been trained on. Okay. So um the way that generative in a very simple simple explanation here very simple metaphor um the way that it's trained is that we take a bunch of examples of something.
So lots and lots of data. So if we wanted to make an AI model that recognizes cats, right? we'd feed it tons and tons of images of cats. Um, so that assistive or traditional AI would say, "Okay, I've seen enough cats that I can recognize that thing as a cat and
everything else is not a cat." Well, generative AI blew everything out of the water and it said, "Well, now I've seen enough cats. I'm trained on enough data that I can create a cat for you." And so that is an actual AI created image of a cat using
I'm not sure which Dolly from um chat GBT. So you can imagine you've heard all of the challenges that this presents from academic integrity issues to learning uh loss issues stealing the thinking as as Max was talking about. These are all
very important things but at the same time we know again this is not going away. Uh it is accelerating and we need to address it uh in schools. Uh it presents both a challenge but also an opportunity right. Um you all have probably had a chance to try it at some
point and and maybe it's helping you in your life right now. It's helping me and mine in a lot of ways. So how do we balance those things? Um, one thing that I want to state that we have uh tried to make very clear is that when it comes to AI in the classroom, our teachers, our
staff are in the driver's seat. They know their students, they know their uh curriculum and we want to empower them to make the best decisions that they can while also providing the resources and the professional learning uh to learn and grow as this thing continues to
impact us. So, what are those resources? Um couple years ago, uh myself, um our manager on our team, um sat down and started drafting some guiding principles, uh that we then worked alongside a group of division leaders
who went to um some professional learning experiences. Dr. Hos came to a couple of those uh where we then took those, refined them, and as a division came up with a guiding principles document. This is a what do we believe about AI? And what it basically says in
essence is exactly what I said before is that there are challenges and there are opportunities and we need to address both of those. Um you are welcome to click in and take a look at that document. It is linked. U we will continue to revise this document. It's probably time to do that already even
though we I feel like we just finished it but again AI is changing so quickly. On top of that, um, myself and a couple folks from our team partnered with a couple folks in the department of instruction, Monica's going to share with you a little bit in a minute to
develop some instructional best practices. So, this is this says, okay, based on what we believe about AI, based on those challenges and those opportunities, what are the recommended best practices when it comes to how they impact learning? if I'm a teacher that's going to use AI, what are some some
cautions look for uh some some things to consider? Um, and then on top of that, we have our resources. And these resources are are extensive. There can be more and there will be more. Um, but we're going to hear a little bit about them now. And Monica is going to come up and talk
about some of those resources. >> So, one of one of the first resources that we framed was a syllabus statement. And the purpose of this was to send consistent messaging across all content areas. And that syllabus statement appears on on everyone's syllabi at the beginning of the year. It does lay out
to students that when they don't follow the AI guidelines, they will be subject to the same academic misconduct and integrity violations. And it lays out four points. The first point is really um that the teacher once again is in the driver's seat and they are the ones who are defining the degree and the role of
appropriate use of AI in a particular assignment. Um if a teacher does not uh say any specific use then the default is no AI should be used and if a student is confused or needs clarification we've encouraged students to just further ask
for that but the default is if I don't mention anything as a teacher then you really shouldn't be using AI on this assignment. If you are using AI I should be clarifying some type of role and we'll go into the roles in just a minute. The second point that we um lay out on that syllabus statement is when AI is permitted the student should be
ethically using it and citing the source that they use the platform and how they use it in what way. The third point that we have is that the AI results can be biased and inaccurate. So when you like to use the tool then you are responsible for checking the accuracy and the biases
that are in that um piece of of material or research that you are using. Finally, the last point is we students pay attention to the privacy of their data because these prompts, you know, may be public or you don't need to like say your first name, your last name, your location and all of those pieces.
The other resource that is accompanied by this is the student usage scale. I'm going to try to click on that right now. Can I get full screen? Yeah. Thanks. So there are four categories for AI use. The first one is a teacher says we don't
need any AI on this particular assignment. The second level is AI is appropriate for planning and um if you look towards the right hand side there are some examples that you might use this as a citation generator. You might use it for brainstorming. You might say, "Give me five resources that I can use
as leads in this in this research piece." I'm going to scroll down. The third piece is a little bit more handinhand, and it's AI collaboration. So, at that point, you're using it to analyze data. You're using it to um look and create an illustration such as a pie
chart for data. You're using it to edit. So, it's doing a little bit more work than that planning stage. And finally, there's the fourth stage, which is full AI. you can openly use it to create text, to create images for you. The part that gets a little bit gray in the landscape that we're living in is the
level two and level three. With um AI planning, sometimes a student might use a tool like Grammarly. And Grammarly may pick up little pieces of punctuation and fix them for you. However, if a student crosses over to the paid version of Grammarly, you've now probably, if you're a student, you may not realize
you're crossing over to level three, which is collaboration. At that point, it's probably not just fixing the commas and the punctuation. It's actually changing the tone and voice of your writing and maybe, you know, changing word order or changing specific words. So, there is kind of this this landscape
and then if a student does that, you have to think about what was the intent there. Was it done unknowingly? Was it done intentionally? So, like this piece is something that we encourage the teacher to use to clearly define the role of AI and to to make it as clear as possible. like if students don't know about Grammarly advising that you're not
using a paid version. Um just because this is all a new landscape for students and for teachers. I'm going to try to return. There we go. The last um resource is just referring back to our Virginia state standards. The secondary curriculum, the 2024 English language
arts actually dictate that from grades 6 through 12 that we actually discuss the use of AI. In fact, if I read the the exact text to you, I wrote I scribbled it down before I came up here. It says that students will demonstrate ethical and responsible use of all sources
including the internet, AI, and new technologies as they develop. So, teaching the ethical use, teaching how to site this material, how to create a prompt so that you can generate something um beneficial. These are all pieces that are tied to our curriculum. Every year we offer two lessons through
the middle school level English classroom and two lessons through the high school English level classroom um where we discuss some of these pieces of ethics and understanding AI and they kind of progressively get uh more complex. We also offer a lesson that comes through the history classroom and
if you notice history and English are the two subjects where the humanities where we are writing the most. So I don't want to misconstrue uh some of the teachers feelings but you know in this in this area this becomes really difficult for teachers because the students are writing essays and especially as you go to dual enrollment
in AP you're writing at such a fast clip and turnover for essays that you can't do it all in class you can't some of it has to be done at home away so we're navigating this landscape um and this is kind of an entry point for teaching students a touchstone of of this is the
ethics if it's used this is the way it's used correctly Um, and then the last piece is the computer science standards. So, computer science standards go across K through 8. After that, they become an elective course and it's much more complex and you're interested in it. So, you chose that. But K through eight, those
computer science standards are are infused across all content areas and all teachers are supposed to have a a role in shaping that. It doesn't necessarily look like I'm teaching coding in my English language arts class. You know, it's probably more about uh a habit and
a mindset of computer science. So, you're teaching um ethical use, machine learning, like when you enter data, this is what it might look like. Um this is a rationale and logic that we're using. So, some of those pieces that those habits of mindset with computer science
are kind of um taken across all content areas and supported K through eight. So these are our entry points for where we uh try to infuse uh the correct use of AI because as we said you know it's a double-edged sword. The teacher is in the driver's seat and um these are our
two curriculum points that the VDOE expects us to to touch on these topics. >> Thank you Monica. I will also note that we have um over the course of this year received some feedback around the existing lessons and curriculum from staff and students and
we're incorporating that into a process right now. We're currently undergoing revision of those resources which we'll probably need to do every year with how quickly this is changing. And finally, terms of resources, I've mentioned our LTI's uh tonight. Um they
are out in schools helping with this. um they are working day in and day out with folks particularly at the secondary level because that's where we're seeing the most impact um and you can just see some stats there around things that we have uh done um so this year um we've
also provided through our LTI program some the opportunities to bring teachers to different events to learn about this as well so examples of um through Visti through ODU there have been a few opportunities that um we've brought uh teachers to um and then finally
professional learning sessions. Um we have some developed. We've got a plan in place. Um our snow really dinged a couple professional learning days this year and we're really looking forward to picking those back up next year. Um as we continue to provide PL around this.
Um lastly, I just want to call your attention back to those instructional best practices. I think you'll find them interesting uh if you have an opportunity to take a look at any point. And I want to end this portion with a video before we jump into the
experience. Um, this is in their own words students and their perspective on AI. Okay, class. Today we're going to talk about AI. What have we heard about it? Everly, I see you back there.
>> If you ask it to write an essay about something, it will like write your essay for you. And that some people like cheat on their essays. >> You can put fake videos of people online. >> It could give me wrong information. I searched a question and the AI overview
literally said the opposite of what was right. >> One of my real big worries is about it taking jobs. Like you're already seeing that AI is trying to be teachers. >> Well, I'm in trouble then, huh? Are you allowed to use IT FOR SCHOOL WORK?
>> OKAY, so be honest. How many of you are using it anyway? >> But seems like we have a problem here. So, how would you fix it? >> Today, you're going to create our new AI policy. Like right now, desk together, groups of
four, please. Let's do this. I think that we really need to learn a lot about AI now because we can already tell that it's going to be a huge part of our lives. >> So, I've heard about people um making friends and socializing with AI and I
feel like that's a little bit concerning. AIS don't have personalities. They kind of just agree with everything you say. You need a friend that's willing to tell you like if you're wrong and tell you if you're right if you actually and be honest with you.
>> AI should be a tool and not a friend. >> Not everybody has access to AI whether it's because they don't have a device at home or they don't have internet or stuff like that. So only use AI if everyone can use AI. >> Okay. Yeah, that's a great idea.
It can't answer certain things and it can't like write essays or something like that, >> but it can pull it can pull trustworthy sources for you. >> It was really fun to kind of just pull all of our knowledge together because we
were all learning a lot from each other. >> AI can track your digital footprint. So, just be careful with it. >> AI safety should be and >> kids never get to make the rules at school. Well, I'm not even sure who does says I like who the principal does. I I
have no idea who actually makes the rules at my school. >> Over reliance on a AI will make it so you don't learn anything. >> Yeah, I feel like we just need a class that will teach us how to navigate AI
and make sure that our brains don't turn into mush because of it. It's really important to use AI responsibly and do what your teachers say. I don't want an AI teacher. You know, there's like no emotion there.
A better combo is the teacher using the AI and then they're both teaching the children. AI is really empowering if you have some guidelines around it. >> Honestly, I'm just curious how it works and I think that a lot of kids are. I
would love to learn how it can be used in everyday life and how it can be used as an accurate source of information. AI is like taxes. It's unavoidable and if you don't learn to evolve with it,
you're going to be left behind. >> I definitely want to be a part of solving big problems. We need to have a say in AI policies because AI literacy is really important.
>> All right. Very cute, right? But also very important. Um, and what struck me about that video is that all the things that I know that my team has been thinking about to hear kids be thinking about the same thing. to hear Max tonight share that he's thinking about the same stuff. Um, we're all on the
same team here and we Yeah, we just got to get to work. And with that, we're going to step into the remainder of our presentation. Um, I'm going to say from this point forward, I'm going to leave it up to
you. I know it's very late. Um, so we can uh continue to go through things as planned and get interactive. Um, we can also just share with you about what we would do if this were an interactive experience.
That is up to you all. Um, in in the interest of time. So, what would you all like? >> What? Yeah, I'm fine with you sharing it with us. >> Yes. >> Okay, I'll share. Sounds good. All right. So, you are a group of
principles. When we use AI, uh there are some core guard rails that I really want you all to think about. Um these are very important to make sure that it's used responsibly as an administrator uh in a building. Uh first guard rails that we want to make sure that uh all ACPS
policy still applies to the use of AI. Um they include the policies that you all heard about earlier tonight. Um data protection is very important with AI. There are a lot of tools out there that um will use AI to train their model or excuse me use your data to train their
model and we want to avoid those tools for use specifically in school and the reason for that is due to the protection of student data and the laws that govern that. We need to make sure that student information is not being used by a company to profit and that student
information is not making its way into somebody else's results. Uh so we want to make sure we are only using the aligned and approved tools uh that we have in the school division. You can see those by clicking on this link. Um note to the board we are looking more closely
at these tools and maybe refining this list a little bit further in the future. We have an AI steering committee uh that includes a lot of departments that is currently having this conversation. Uh Garrell number three um Google Gemini is the division adopted AI tool. The
reason for that is because uh we have we use Google um and we have an enterprise uh subscription to Google as a school division and part of that includes a provision in our contract that uh they don't do anything with our data. We own
our data. Um so by using uh Google Gemini we're ensuring uh that there's in there's more data security involved. Um, additionally, uh, by using Gemini, we we do have the, um, ability as needed to just see what's going on in there. So,
something concerning or something alarming happens, um, we're able to, as a technology department, take a look and help our school administrators out with uh, uh, addressing issues. Additionally, as a member of ACPS with this subscription, you have access to
Google's Pro model, which, if you didn't know, cost you $20 a month otherwise. So, uh, big pro there. Um, it's very important to remember that we want to anonymize or pseudonymize any data that we put in. Even if we're using Gemini, we want to take that extra step and
precaution with student data. So, if you're going to use AI to process data in any way, you either want to strip those identifiers, those names out, or change them. Use initials, use numbers, something so that the AI doesn't know who that data ties back to. Um, we want
to remember that no AI AI tool is perfect. Um, they are all prone to what we call hallucination. AI is designed to give you an output. It will give you something. And if it can't give you what you what you want or it doesn't know what to give you, it's going to make
something up. That is how the technology works. Um, so always always always check what it gives you. Garbage in, garbage out, right? Um, and then finally, we are, um, if we're going to be using it with staff or students, we're going to
reference those instructional best practices. Um, and we're never ever ever going to use AI to create items for sensitive student documents such as IEPs. And now, Katie is going to share with you a little bit about what you can do in terms of improving your own
productivity through effective prompting. All right. So, how many of you have used an AI chatbot before? Okay. So, it's it's yeah, this is this I just want to know so that I know kind of
where where we're moving from. So, whenever you are talking to an AI, there are three basic components we want you to keep in mind. So, that Clay was saying, garbage in, garbage out. We want to make sure you're getting the best possible result. So those three big components are perspective, purpose and
parameters. Um should I skip this one? >> Okay. So if you were just to look at these two prompts, we have an instructional prompt and we have an operational prompt. The instructional one says, give me a 45minute professional development session with
staff to help improve classroom management strategies. So, if I just put that into Gemini, what am I missing? And if you were with the principles, we'd have you turn and talk. And if we were doing this with, you know, our operational staff, the alternative is,
all right, make a communication that's going to go to all staff, students, and families saying that we have a two day closure due to snow and ice. All right, so we're just kind of thinking about what are we missing from this. It's very generic, right? we're not giving it the specifics that it
needs. So when we are thinking of perspective, this is where we are giving the AI a role. There is emerging um research coming out of the University of Pennsylvania that actually telling the AI, hey, you're going to be the superintendent of a school district or
hey, you're a fourth grade classroom teacher with uh 25 kids in your class. That kind of nuance actually isn't as important. Personally, what I love to do is I like to tell the AI what my role is. So, if I want an a specific output,
I'm going to tell it I'm a technology coach. Something that my team really likes to use when we are using AI is something called the 8020 rule where we can have the AI do 80% of the work for us, but we need to make sure that we're going in and doing that other 20%. So if
I tell the AI, hey, this is my role, that kind of is an extra safeguard to make sure that whatever the output it is giving me, I'm then going to have to put it into my own words. We also have the purpose. Those two examples we gave, that's really all it
was. It's the purpose. This is the meat and the potatoes. This is the part of most prompts that people are really good at. We're really good at telling AI what we want it to do. But what we really need to work on are the parameters. Something that's really
come up with our students is really these concerns about how AI is impacting the environment. And guess what? The more conversations we're having with AI, the bigger of an impact we're having. So, if I can put in one conversation that's going to give me everything I
need, that's going to take me out of this kind of iterative cycle because the AI is going to keep talking to me. It never wants to stop. So if I tell it exactly the output that I need, that's going to encourage those conversations to get me to my end goal, which is to
actually for me to get to the classroom to work with teachers, not to be sitting on my computer talking to AI. So to take those prompting examples and expand upon them, the same two that you just saw here is what that might look
like if we actually follow the three Ps. Just take a quick look there. >> Okay, can move on. just the the parameter on um I had never thought about using that but this idea of because we have because
we translate officially or through Google translator so many of our communications that they use uh use vocabulary and syntax easily translated via machine translation um like that's an like interesting ad important ad that I never thought about.
>> Yeah, we're teaching you to think like the AI thinks. Yeah. Right. Yep. There are many more examples of really awesome prompts that follow the three Ps at that link if you're ever curious. And just as a quick example for you, um
here are two different one prompt with output that's just purpose driven and the same prompt with all three P's and a different output. And you'll see an example there of how much higher quality
that output is. I want to state very important. We've heard it scratched the surface of it tonight. AI uses a lot of natural resources. We care about this. Our communities care about this. Our students care about this. And I encourage you if you're using AI to think about that using the
three Ps is a way to be more efficient with your AI use so that we're not prompting it over and over and over and over again and using more water, using more energy. Megan's going to quickly touch on the
Gemini models. So, as we stated before, one of the main reasons that we are using Gemini um and that's our preferred tool is that it's, you know, packaged in our um Google education accounts that we already purchase um within the division and it
gives us access to all three models. So, when you are prompting Gemini um on the right hand side, you can toggle between these three models. Um fast is really just meant to be um it is fast. I mean, it works instantly and it's meant to be for simple questions. Um, like drafting really simple communications or
summarizing something. Um, just quick, you know, quick quick questions. Um, thinking is now going to go a little bit deeper. It's going to take a little bit longer to get a response. Um, this is where you're going to use if you're trying to analyze data sets, maybe you're trying to make a decision on a complex topic. Um, and then the pro
version is going to take the longest to generate an output. And we want to reserve using the Pro for um really mostly like creation of um materials, creation of content. Um this is going to it's going to take a while and it's going to use the most energy. So again,
thinking about energy consumption, you want to be thinking about what model you're using and for what purpose. Um when we look at the three models of Gemini, >> just a question two, actually two questions on that. One is how are you it sounds like you are thinking about this
use of natural resource and is that part of the training for students teachers leaders so that people are always like aware of that >> is that >> yes I mean this you're seeing a presentation that was just given um and called out to additionally some of the curriculum that Monica was referencing
earlier uh one of the threads and themes in there is this exactly >> and and then the other one um on data sets And I'll I'll ask this like as if I as a principal, right? My question would be where is my data safe not safe? How do I
decide what d like what is our what is our school policy around data? You know, if I want to look at some data deeply um sometimes I use Patrick who I forgot about earlier. Um and that but sometimes I might want to do that and what am I allowed to do not allowed to do?
>> That's a good question. Um right now our answer is that we want to consider the personally identifiable information in that data. >> Um if there is no PII um then we are okay is PII we need to either take it out or we need to as I said in the with one of
the guardrails pseudonmize that data. So that's that's the threshold >> for us right now. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> So I would actually love to comment on this sort of after the section is finished because I'd love to give you my perspective as well. >> I would love to hear your perspective.
Um, what we would then do with our administrators is give them a chance to put the three Ps into practice through the lens of our instructional best practices. So, it's a chance for them to dive into those, but also a chance to actually try out Gemini for themselves.
So, they would open up Gemini, they would choose an instructional best practice and then click on the links. So, let's just say for example, I clicked on communication. It's going to take us to this slide around communication and it's going to give example tasks. Notice these aren't
prompts. These are tasks. You have to engineer the prompt to complete the task um around the theme of communication. The first two tasks would be for our school administrators and the third would be for our operational administrators. These are just examples to get people thinking, to get their,
you know, get the juices flowing, but folks uh in this experience were also welcome to try out prompting for themselves with whatever task that they were dealing with in their day-to-day. And our LTIs would walk around and and help facilitate and help out.
So, what's next? We are looking to collect more student and staff feedback. As I mentioned, right now, we are looking at curriculum. Um, we are also currently conducting our technology survey, which I've spoken with you all about in the past. Um, it's
our main feedback mechanism for our community and for our staff and students around technology use in school and we use that to drive a lot of decision-making. There's a lot of questions on AI out there. Um, we are currently waiting on the translations for our family survey, but if you're a
family member or community member, uh, you'll see that come out in a in a uh, communication soon, and you're welcome to take that and provide your your own feedback. Um, we're revising our existing resources, the ones you've seen tonight, as well as the curriculum. Um, we are looking at creating additional
curriculum. We know that right now mostly it's some in ELA and social studies. Those have been the areas most impacted by the introduction of AI. Uh but that doesn't mean that other subjects are not. Uh so we're looking at other subjects as well. Um we're also
looking at identifying and refining our core tool list of what's out there and what's available. There is a lot out there and a lot of it's good and a lot of it's not. And again it's all on how you use it. Um and so we are taking a look at what it means to have a robust
AI environment that's also very curated. Um and then finally we're keeping an eye on legislation. There is some pending legislation out there um that could have impacts uh in terms of curriculum, even the availability of AI in schools.
Couple additional resources for you. Um there's prompt engineering libraries that are really worth checking out to see examples of what great use of AI looks like uh in the education setting. Um our general resources document you
saw tonight. And then finally, we do have an AI website. um that is publicly facing that shares about our philosophies tonight um and has information for families. I do want to say before I switch to
questions um I made a small mistake in a slide earlier regarding uh curriculum um SAS was on some of our high schools and it turns out that is that is in one high school. So I just wanted to make that correction. Uh, and with that, any
questions that you all might have? >> Did you wanna, >> Max? Yeah. >> I just want to give you my personal take and like kind of an explanation of what I've personally noticed, what my friends have like said to me about AI. I mean,
starting like the AI club, it seemed more controversial than I would like expect it to be. I know people have seen like the posters around school and they've been like, "Oh, Max, you just love so much." I'm like, >> "No, >> right. >> I want to educate you on it." Right. To
use it properly. And it brings into the fact, I love that you mentioned that with the 3Ps, whenever you use it, it's more environmentally friendly. >> And online, this is also something I want to bring up. There's a lot of nuance. You see so many creators saying, "Oh, you have to be learning about AI,
like you have to be using it, right?" But they don't exactly explain how. You know, >> people interpret that as, oh, I go to chatbt, I'll ask it something, right? >> And then it just gives you another bad output and they don't say, oh, learn prompting or anything like that. >> Whereas, you could just go to Google and
you could do a normal search. Like, you don't need to use AI necessarily for like simpler tasks. Like, it's just using up more energy. I know personal friends around me, they've used certain AIs that are cooled by wind instead of water, so it's more environmentally
friendly. But I guess back to the idea of cognitive decline, I've had I've literally had people come to me and say, "Max, I've like lost the ability to like write an essay. I used to be able to do it so fast and now I've used it so much." And even for me personally, I I
mean, I've used it a decent amount. >> But there's two things that you really need to have and it's accountability and it's discipline, right? So, I think it's just always something that we need to teach and we need to keep in mind or else we're going to become so reliant on these things. I mean, it's like social media, right? Now that kids are like
growing up with social media, their brains are like so trained like it's just like a normal thing, but you know, I guess it's just the whole idea of like over over reliance. >> Yep. Absolutely, Max. And I I'm so glad you bring the over reliance point up. I
hope the message that you're hearing tonight is that's what we want to avoid. We want that balanced approach that says what is appropriate use? what how and how can I be metaccognitive about my use? If you have a friend saying, uh,
yeah, I've lost the ability to to write an essay, >> are we helping students to think and recognize, oh, that's a problem, and I need to I need to reflect on my use, right? >> Um, and what do we do about that? And that's those are the kinds of things we want to see in our curriculum and and in
our resources. Yeah. >> Also, one more note on like that cognitive bias thing. I think the reason we've seen so much divide is specifically short form content because you know these students they're being fed things from their like Instagram feed and it's gives the statistics of oh
it's using this much water which is like absolutely true but it forces those students to like see more of that content and then you become less open to looking at opportunities where AI can actually like help you and like where it's going. So you tend to put it off entirely. I feel like that's
a problem as well. But just us talking about it now, it can lead students more to like look into like other options. >> Absolutely. Yeah. >> I think it's interesting too, those of us that are older and went through school without >> laptops or phones or
>> Blackberries or and pages. I mean, we we had no technology, right? Um so we wrote all our essays by hand or typewriters. Um in case you remember what those are, that's how we learned to type, right? in typing class on typewriters. Um, but I
find it interesting now I use AI a lot in my profess profession. My husband's an attorney and he's actually leading a charge on how it's changing the legal field in that it's making people more efficient um so that they can take what they're really good at and focus on that
and and kind of like when email and and you know smartphones came along all of a sudden you don't you're not tied to your desk and working till midnight on a project because you can do it at home or you can do it on the go. But it's interesting to bring up the fact that our students are learn are not getting
that cognitive like engagement of writing an essay of having a debate of doing those things because they're being overly reliant on AI. So, it's a really interesting like thought to think about how it is shaping society now and how um
things are becoming much more efficient and um allows us to maybe do our jobs better in some ways, but in on the flip side of that, a lot of our students are probably hindered by this. Um and so it'll be interesting to see how we develop it so that it becomes an aid and
not a hindrance because you're right, it is it is a part of our society now. It is a part of business. um you're not going to get around technology, but how do we use it again as an aid to make ourselves better at our jobs, more efficient, and not um in place of, you
know, learning how to do these things? And and and that engagement with AI is very much knowing what the prompts are, knowing that you already have the knowledge ahead of time of what exactly you're asking and knowing what you're expecting to come out of it. If you're going into it blindly and just saying,
"Write an essay on Romeo and Juliet and this theme," you know, they're not learning anything. It's just giving them >> I have to have the skill to know what the out what's good out. Right. >> So, it's pretty fascinating. >> Yeah. I um I can't claim credit for this quote. I can't remember who said it. Um it was at a conference and someone said
that we want Yeah. Right. >> that what we want AI to do is to >> offload the procedural productive stuff so that we can do the human stuff. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And how do we maintain the humanity in our students?
Absolutely. I think that's the most important thing is um and and I will say, you know, having kids in all three uh levels in ACPS, I've been really impressed, especially at the elementary level, and I know this was a big concern of you, of the amount of time that were they're on iPads or whatever, and I have
really noticed minimal use. My daughter's in fourth grade, and I really thought it's going to be ticking up. Um and I've been really impressed this year. All of her homework is nothing is on technology. No, none at home. We h she has to write all of her paragraphs
in complete sentences. Um and even when I've been in the classroom, their Chromebooks are put away, their iPads are put away and it's for very much instructional piece in that lesson and then it is away and they are hands-on. And so I hope and and pray that that's
the case in all of our elementary school classes. But I will say that I've been really impressed because that was a concern for us is that there was over reliance on it in elementary school and I haven't seen that um in the last year or two. It seems to be moving after co you know of course that was a big
>> thing but we we seem to have been moved away from that in the last year or two. >> Yeah. We want to move towards intentional use. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. It would be really helpful for me at least and probably for all of us to
have um access to studies that sort of cover both perspectives that I'm sure there are studies that say oh techn is bad and there are other studies that say the opposite. >> So I think it would be helpful for us to
hear from sort of both sides of the argument. So, I don't know if we can have access to >> Oh, yeah. We're happy to partner with you or other resources. >> And I will say, too, you know, my son who has a lot of special needs, it's been a such a gift to us because he
can't write. He can't read very well, but during the day, I will get um a notice that he's shared a document with me in Google Drive and I and and I can see stuff that he's working on that he he doesn't bring home, worksheets and things like that. So for us, it's been a
way to see and pour into what he's doing at school that previously we were not given any access to that. And so it's a way for him to continue to learn in a different way. >> Yeah. Put that high on the edtech triangle, right? >> Yeah. Right. >> Any other questions?
>> Other comments, questions? I mean one of my only kind of parting words I mean first this is very helpful um and I appreciate it and as I think about policies and like I like this is one not that wor I mean that worries me just in
the fact that you like we you like need to stay on top of this just like you know I just can't like you know when I think about your jobs and like as as as Miss Bowman said like how did the way you stay ahead of both on the technology side like what's happening but
particularly AI and how it could and does impact in this rapid changing world. And so I mean what I would say is just however we can help continue to partner with you and support you in understanding the fact that yeah normal policies are in this five-year review
but in this situation you know this might be something every six months a year. That's and that's a big part of why we wrote the policy the way that we did to be more open and flexible so that regulations can be adjusted but really like >> yeah we we can't >> it moves too quick. That's right. And I
will say too that um our our team that's part of their role and that's part of why we're here is to help do that research to help stay ahead. That's um R&D is a big part of the the LTI framework and >> well and just thinking that chat GPT is three years old and how much
>> how much it has changed just in the last year um is mindboggling. So to be able I mean I don't even know how you do stay on top of it when it's changing that rapidly and then trying to protect our our kids. That's a you have a you have a tough job.
>> Last question. Remind me. I should know that because we just passed the budget, but how many LTI do we have and how are they deployed? >> We have 14. Um, and they are deployed across we have a a secondary team and an elementary team. Small exception to that is, uh, Katie currently also supports
center one. >> Um, and they are most share schools. >> We have one or two exceptions to that at some of our really large high schools. It's really just the one. Um, we actually we're at 13 right now. We just we just made a a hire for next year for 14. So
>> awesome. >> Yeah. >> Well, thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate it. I appreciate you all staying so late. >> Yeah. Thank you all for We know you have early mornings as well. So, thank you so much for everything that you do. We so appreciate it.
>> Thank you. >> Do we have any other business before the board um by the superintendent or any board members or staff? Looking to my right. Yep. Looking to my left. Um, seeing no nothing before us, I am going to adjourn us at 9:25. Thank
you all so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. >> Thank you.