Wrap the table harder than our knuckles are not prepared for that. It's a big handle. I hope that, hope that everybody had a wonderful holiday season. I hope everyone is is, appreciative. Is that one of our schools won a ball game this year as well? That's insane. Who is that in town? Basically, in in my hometown of Shreveport. So it was a very, very eventful break for us and, in fact in glad to be back to work. And so we'll call the meeting forward, and, we'll just start with the program. Good morning, everyone.
Happy New Year. Roll call is as follows. Doctor Jim Henderson? Here. Mister Conrad Appel? Here. Miss Evelina Bussard? Here. Miss Misty Cordell? Here. Mister Aaron Cooney? Yes. Miss Rebecca Gilead? Here. Mister Trey Godfrey? Miss Beija Morgan? Here. Miss Rachel Parker? Mister Marco Kenneth? Here. Mister Todd Wedgworth? Here. Mister Davis Danbrecher? Here. Doctor Vanessa Baggett? Here. Doctor Paula Paul Faron here. Mister cut I'm sorry.
Mister Chuck Crabtree? Mister Jackson Dirks? Here. Mister Dustin Gaspar? Here. Mister Lance Harris? Here. Mister Ronnie Morris? Here. Mister Andy Quick? Here. Mister Matt Winters? He is online. Mister Booth? Mister Preston Castile? Mister Aaron Gulaga? Here. Senator Rick Edmond? Mister Stephanie Goebel? Here. Miss Mary Hubbard? Mister o Marcadilla? Here. Representative Lori Slade Slagle? Here. Mister Matthew Mint? Here. Mister Anthony Owen?
We have a form. Wonderful. But we also have some guests here, and I would like to actually, introduce one of the guests because she's been a dear friend for more than thirty years now, but has done as much to advance workforce policy and education policy in the state as anybody, the doctor Lisa Smith Foster. Doctor, thank you for being here. Thank you. We met in 14 now, but We did. Yeah. One of our hair is not as varied in there. We have some other guests in there too. Introduce yourselves. Katie Bosch, center of. Who decided? Social department.
Works at a here at Alarm. Here at Alarm. Here at Alarm. Williams, is there consulting at Alarm's School? Glad to have everybody here. You've got a a copy of the minutes. You've got the first version that had us doing something with truancy, but we we got that fixed. We did not if anyone was concerned about that, we did not address truancy in the last meeting. But if we got a chance to review those minutes, we'd entertain a motion to, approve of this. We got a motion. The latest number has a second. Second, all in favor. The motion, the the the minutes are approved. Folks, I hope, I'm welcoming you back to work, welcoming you back to work at
this committee. One of the the first things that that that president Morris turned me onto was the work occurring into the in the state of Utah. And we thought it would be important to hear, from Matt Winters on that work. We've got a very substantive, presentation. Before we get to that, I'd like Ronnie to to kinda introduce that work and and introduce mister Winters for us, and then we can get started in in, right after that. So Thank you. Thank you, mister president. We we might be here quite a while if I'm gonna cover everything Utah is doing, with with Matt, leading that a lot of that work.
I would just briefly share with you guys that, I know I think several of us in the room were able to attend the Excel and Edge conference, recently in New Orleans. And, part of that conference, Matt was on the distinguished panel, discussing, this topic. I believe he was one of four members of the panel. Each member of the panel spoke to a specific area, within this broad AI conversation, and and they were nationally recognized, subject matter experts in those particular areas.
But I think Matt really stood out in the whole group, and I know we had the respect in all three of the other panelists, with regard to the progress that Utah has made across the board. But probably most impressive for me personally was the impact that they've made with with their government relations and and with the, state and and, and statute policies that they put in place to date. They've done I think they've done from my limited perspective, they've done a great job
engaging, appropriate agencies, within state government. So so folks have some buy in at the appropriate levels. We're all working together on this going forward, so they recognize it as a priority. And and they've engaged the appropriate agencies within state government. So with that, Matt, welcome. Thank you so much for your time this morning. I understand we're we're working on a on a site visit here with some of the folks we've been going forward. So looking forward to that. But, really appreciate your comments this morning, what you have to share with with our
group here in Louisiana. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Ronnie. And and thank you so much. I'm I'm just very happy to be here with you, and thank you for the kind words about my presentation, but then also the work happening here in Utah. It is a very much a collaborative effort. We are, a very collaborative state, and it's been incredible to see just in the short time that generative AI from, you know, three years ago just over three years ago would hit to now, how many people came together to really try and figure out what are the best practices and best goals here.
So before I get going, I just wanna check on time. How long would you like me to go today? And then I wanna make sure I leave some time for questions as well. So you you're the predominant part of the, the agenda today. So we've got all the time that we need to substantively cover your presentation. I just don't wanna step on any toes at the, you know, towards the end of the presentation and those sorts of things. So I'll go for about forty minutes, and then maybe we can get do some q and a and things like that and answer some questions. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen really quick. Can you guys see that okay? Should be my presentation. I just got it. Okay. Perfect. That's great. So, first of all, there's my email, matt dot winters at schools dot utah dot
gov. I'm more than happy to collaborate. That's where this came from was a collaboration, in discussion with some of your represent representation in Louisiana. I've been doing this, with other states, across the the country because Utah is genuinely trying to read the way lead the way with human centered artificial intelligence use. We, have taken some big strides both in education, but then also in higher education and also industry, commerce, legislatively to really dig into these issues and make sure that
we have a superstructure for it going on. So before we get too deep into what Utah has been doing, I wanna share with you a little bit about how we present this to our constituencies, particularly our teachers. Over the you'll hear a little bit more about this in the presentation, but we were lucky enough to have a half million dollar grant here in the state of Utah to go out and work with teachers across the state to prepare them for artificial intelligence integration. And, in the grant, it was written to hopefully get about 1,500 teachers out of our population of about 25,000 to 30,000 teachers to come out and join the training.
We ended up with about, we're just about to cross the 7,000 threshold threshold mark, in the last eight months. And so it's been an incredible journey to train teachers. And I wanted to start with an introduction about how we usually talk about education or AI with our educators in the end, also global constituencies. So you have four images in front of you, folks. I've been generating I generate these, like, almost the first day I worked at Utah State Board of Education. These four images kind of outline the the progression of technology over the last hundred years. So we start off with what is the oldest technology known to man, which is
or one of the oldest technologies known to man, which is a horse drawn carriage. That horse drawn carriage was our means for for commerce, for cultured exchanges, war, all sorts of things over the last, you know, four or five millennia. And we really built our civilization around that. And if you ever doubt how how that is I mean, you guys live in Louisiana. There's I've been to the, you know, the French Quarter down in in New Orleans. The streets are tight. They were designed around horse drawn carriages and and and, people walking on foot.
They weren't designed for cars. And so in 1899, when the first car came off the line, all of a sudden, we had this very much weird juxtaposition of two technologies hitting against each other. Now cars at first were incredibly unsafe. They didn't have seat belts, windshields. They were expensive. Only the very wealthy could have it. And then over the course of about thirty five years, it became very much integrated into our civilization. That was based on things like the four production line, honestly, World War one and then the lead up to World War two, economic boom during the nineteen twenties, although
that ended with the financial crisis in in 1929. But all of a sudden, cars by about 1935, 1940 were a ubiquitous tool inside of our civilization, and it created all this weird scarring. A few years ago, I got the opportunity to drive cross country to a friend of mine friend of mine's conference in Boston, And, another friend of mine, his daughter was going to Harvard at the time, and they needed me to drop off a few things for her. And I just made the decision to drive in Downtown Cambridge, and, I thought, oh, well, it's rush hour.
It'll probably take me, like, forty five minutes to an hour to get to my hotel. It's, like, three or four miles away. Three hours later, I got to my hotel and phoned my friend who lives in Boston what happened to me. And she's like, that's just how it is here because the roads were designed for horses, not for cars. And so we have this really quick adoption of cars into our civilization. And in thirty five years, it changed our civilization. Then we have the calculator. The calculator comes around in nineteen sixties, nineteen seventies. And all of a sudden from basically, no calculators available in our in our educational
system to the ubiquity was about twenty years. Same thing with laptop computers. It was about fifteen to twenty years. And so when we think about these these three technologies that have transformed our our our civilization over the last hundred years, the distance from creation to ubiquity to kind of it's a fundamental technology of our society is only is getting shorter and shorter and shorter. And right now, currently, when we talk about artificial intelligence, as I as you all know, generative AI, it it's moving so quickly and funneling into so many areas of
our lives. And I have to remind myself a lot to talk about AI is not just generative AI. There are many different animals in the zoo of artificial intelligence. And that's why we're seeing that ubiquity happening so quickly because they've been inside of so many of our systems for so long. But generative AI, they were the theorists were proposing that it was gonna be ten to fifteen years before it was fully adopted. And now we're starting to see it be more closer to, like, five to ten years. And that creates all sorts of problems in our society where where we have to shift and move rapidly to make things happen.
And that's part of that that curve of development and curve of evolution over time, to help us get to a really interesting place. And this technology is really taking sense in some interesting spaces that get us thinking. This was a talk that was done by, doctor McClenny. I I just put his bio up here. This was in October at the University of Utah. And I was sitting there listening to his talk, and I went, oh, this is kinda cool. And then it just it blew my mind. What his research before he went to Cisco was on was being able to develop, AI systems that could, basically perform an experiment once the conditions for the experiment had
been done once in real life. So, basically, he could rerun his experiments again and again and again without ever having to do them in the physical world, and he could change variables and things like that. Basically, he was able to duplicate the reality of his experiments in artificial intelligence to be able to run the experiments as many times as he wants. We're seeing these kinds of developments rapidly. Now on the flip side of that, over the last few weeks, obviously, we've all been paying attention. There's so many shifts and changes, and there's some dangers that come along with our generative artificial intelligence that we all have to think about and move forward with.
So that's where teams and collaboration come in very, very rapidly. One of the things that I always think about with the Utah community and then also our global kind of US community, but then also the global community in general around artificial intelligence, is what makes our technological ecosystems grow? How do we allow them to grow in a way that is growing the way that we want them to? Think about my friend. I I didn't know. I'm not a gardener, but I have a friend who's a really good gardener. And she explained to me one day, you know, rotating your pots, being able to get them turned towards sunlight because they'll grow oddly if you don't rotate them over
time. They'll grow towards the sunlight. I I had never really thought about that. And when I think about our technological ecosystem, I think about what are the things that are gonna make it grow appropriately, the ways that we want it to go, and the things that will make it grow towards the the the sunlight that may be not the direction that we want it to go. And so what makes that ecosystem grow for the state of Utah is a lot of being able to think about what's coming down the pipeline. This is something that I share with teachers. I've been sharing for years. Before I was, at the Utah State Board of Education, I was a statewide trainer
here in Utah through Utah Education Network, which we'll talk about later. And I had always thought about how do we adopt a mindset that is focused on shifting changes rather than establishing norms around existing systems. Because we're in a system right now, globally, where things are shifting and changing so fast, we have to be able to adapt even in education to that. So luckily, I I went to a seminar, from the the Stanford Design School, about
three, four years ago where they talked about futures mindset. And I kind of adapted it here in the state of Utah. And so what we've been trying to instill in our teachers and then also our our administrators, across the state of Utah is being, this future's mindset, which is a, being open to changes. We have to know that well, especially with generative AI and other new new technologies, we have to be open to the change that's happening around us, and know that that change may be positive, may be negative. And that leads us to being flexible to those changes over time.
A great example of this, I I part of my role at Utah State Board of Education is internal professional development. And so I work with a lot of our our team members who are brilliant human beings, but they're brilliant in the thing that they are very much focused on. And so I have to work with them on artificial intelligence. And sometimes they're a little bit frustrated because it's not doing the thing that they want it to do. I had a colleague come to me last summer. He said, I'm using Gemini. It's an approved tool. It's going fine, but it's not doing the thing I want it to do, which was, a very simple, task.
But the AI wasn't quite there yet technologically. And I said, I'm sorry. It's just not there. Give it a couple of months, and it'll probably be there. Surprisingly, the next morning, I I I woke up, came to work, and the shift had already happened. And they had the technology was able the AI was able to do the thing that he was asking him to do. I emailed him, and he was off to the races with it. And so sometimes we have to be flexible and willing to to work with those changes. And then the third thing is willing to live with ambiguity. When we talk about massive shifts and changes, we have to be able to be,
look at those changes and go, okay. There's some unknowns here. And living with unknowns is a little bit difficult. But then we can start thinking about what those unknowns mean down the line and start working towards understanding what kind of policies and ideas might help us to corral those. It takes a forward thinking group, which you guys are, to really start thinking about those things and and and dig into them. So, again, being open to change, flexible with those changes, and being willing to live a little bit with those ambiguity. So how do we cultivate that in our larger world of education, but then also
in our larger ecosystems of, statewide systems around, AI and all sorts of things that are happening. So here's the three main components of why Utah is thriving with AI and education. And and, genuinely, these are things that have allowed us to thrive for much, much longer, over timeline. I'll show you some of that here in a few minutes, than just AI and education. So the first thing is that we, as a state, have a historical trend of
investing in innovation at all layers of our ecosystem. I'll talk a little bit about this in a few minutes, when we get to some of the the leadership components. But from an educational standpoint, I just wanna highlight two big things. In the state of Utah, over the last decade, we had one superintendent, that was leading the charge. Her name was superintendent Sid Dixon. Now Sid sadly retired about six months ago. We have a great new superintendent, superintendent Hart. But she was really innovative and and same with superintendent Hart about an an, push for change in our ecosystem.
And so, there were two big things that shifted in the last decade that really have kind of set us up for education in an AI here. The first one is, the we have a grant called the Utah Digital Teaching and Learning Grant. I'm gonna go ahead and and exit my presentation. You should still be able to see my screen. I'm gonna pull up the website really quick. The website is dtlutah.org. Everything is public. So if you're interested, you can go check this out. And I'll I can send these links to Regine afterwards and and make sure you guys have access. This program started in 2016.
And, basically, what it is is it's a legislatively funded grant. It's usually between 18 and $22,000,000 of shifts every year. Every district and and every charter school that's public in the state of Utah gets a baseline amount of funding if they apply for this program. I believe it's around $44,000. But then they get an amount per pupil that on top of that. So our larger districts get more money. Some of our smaller districts or charter schools get less money. But, basically, what this grant has allowed us to do over the last ten years
is build capacity for educational technology, allowed us to hire coaches to support technology in school buildings, and then also be able to provide the professional development that a lot of our districts and charter schools need. So it's created an ecosystem where the development of technological skills is actually highlighted and foregrounded in a lot of the content area and grade levels. So teachers are deeply thinking about how do I actually apply this into my classroom, and how do I work this through?
And so it's added to the ecosystem over time. If you're interested in digging deep into those folks, I'm just gonna point to LEA profiles right here. You can see all of our LEAs are local educational agencies across the state. And you can click into them and see how they spend their money over time and what have some some of those outcomes have been. The other thing that I'll point to as well is, believe it's under state stats. I'm just gonna go yep. There it is. So, we've been tracking artificial intelligence as a, idea since the end of, the school
year in 2023. So this would be about April, May 2023. And we actually have, three years worth of data now where it's actually telling us over time the growth and changes with artificial intelligence. Part of that is policy. And so we actually are able to see, the shift and changes with policy adoption in our LEAs, from 2023 where there is essentially no policy and nobody was really looking at this except for some of our most forward thinking districts to now where it's, about half to three fourths of our districts and charter schools have some sort
of policy around AI. Now we're not like there's a few states in the in the country, Tennessee and Ohio, who have instituted a policy, at the legislative level around artificial intelligence policy in schools and districts. We haven't quite done that yet. I don't know if that's going to happen this year. There's some discussion about that legislatively. If you're interested, I I have the model policies from those two states, and I'd be happy to share them with anybody on the board. The other thing that I'd point to you just really quickly if you're interested folks is we also have scenarios. These are real, outcomes from our teachers, who take the survey.
We usually get between seven and ten thousand teachers who take the survey every year. And what this we've done, with our collaborators on this program is we can see all levels, we can see all content areas, but then we also can see anything that is artificial intelligence based. And these are what they refer to those teachers refer to as things that they have been using artificial intelligence for in their classrooms. As you may know as educators, right now we're still in the kind of the flux point of how do we actually encourage artificial intelligence in our classrooms.
One of the big hit points for that is our teachers don't have lesson plans or guidance documents around that. So these kind of tools are invaluable on that. Being able to see how real teachers are using it and whether or not those are efficacious as well. So that's one side of the the program. On the other side of our leadership program that's kind of a historical trend is we have also had a program called, personalized competency based learning. This was another legislatively funded grant that provided funding to schools and, charter schools and
districts to do innovative things in their districts and charter schools that would help with seat time, personalized learning, those sorts of things. And it's led to some really innovative changes in our state. One big one is that our one of our largest districts, Davis, County School Districts, just north of Salt Lake City, they use their funding to create what's called the Catalyst Center. Catalyst Center is a magnet school, that has a working hospital, a gaming center, game development center. It has a multimedia center as well, and then also a working full chef's kitchen.
It's been amazing school for the kids in that community and and been able to, funnel a lot of kids towards really interesting educational opportunities, including some things in artificial intelligence. And, last year, the legislature, set aside $50,000,000 for districts to be able to duplicate that process, and we're starting to see the fruits of that across the state. So we have this long term lens of innovation in in the state of Utah. And it's going back literally decades. We also have a a system here in Utah called UEN, and I'll talk about them in a little bit more, but they provide the backbone for education, educational Internet
here in the state of Utah. And so that's number one. Number two, folks, is that we have a deeply robust collaborative community here in the state. In terms of education, every month, in fact, they're meeting tomorrow morning, we have a meeting called c forum. It is open to any publicly funded school in the state of Utah, and they it's basically the intersection of our technologists and our curriculum folks. And they get together once a month to talk about problems of practice and hear presentations on a variety of subjects. Tomorrow, they're talking about charter school lenses around artificial intelligence.
It's a really interesting group, and that's one of literally dozens that we have across the state. We have collaborative communities in education for our IT folks, for our curriculum directors, for our, every coach, and technology coach that get together in a certain group. Just and the list kinda goes on and on and on for there. And outside of education, I routinely am collaborating with our office of AI policy, which I'll talk about. In fact, yesterday, spent an hour and a half with them talking about some problems
of practice. Routinely collaborate with the University of Utah and other universities across the state of Utah, as well as legislators and community members across the board. One of the biggest constituencies that we work with, and me in particular, and and they're always happy to work with collaboratively across the state, are are, business development partners and are companies who make artificial intelligence. I routinely have conversations with the those companies, just to help understand what they're doing in their build process and to enunciate what are some of the needs in Utah
schools and the larger Utah ecosystem. So we have this robust community that isn't gate kept. It's anybody will talk to anybody, and we have these really interesting conversations because of that. And the third part is deep expertise is being openly shared. When I started this position within a couple of days, I had conversations with lawyers, with legislators, with, AI builders, with superintendents because everyone really want to share their expertise and their point of view around this. And, again, it wasn't being gatekept.
It was, let's just have this conversation and see what kind of expertise could be lent to this conversation. And it's it's born some really interesting converse or, results across the state of Utah, which I'll talk about here in a few minutes. So again, I just wanna foreground all three of these for you is really why we're heading forward. Isn't the technology and some wonderful group of data centers and and AI builders that we have here in the state of Utah? It really comes down again to we've invested in this over the long term. We have that robust collaborative community that just continues to to discuss and work together.
And we have some deep expertise here in the state of Utah that is being shared and and not being gate kept as that process goes forward. So I wanna give you a little bit of a timeline of some of the things that we've been doing here in the state of Utah. First of all, in April 2024, USB adopt a AI framework. I have a QR code for that here in just a minute, but you can also find that on schools.utah.gov. The framework we were, I believe, the fourteenth state to have a framework documentation, it is a living document. It's not meant or designed to be a stagnant, piece of of of policy.
It's meant to change and evolve over time based on the technology and the needs. So I'm actually working on a version two. I've been working on it for about six months. It's not going to be a robust change to it, but it's trying to be nuanced. There's been so many shifts over the last two years to what we see in artificial intelligence, and I wanna make sure that the document reflects those changes but also doesn't just shift completely. The second thing, folks, that we did that is pretty unique, across the country is when we were when I I in my prior position, I I was hired here
at USP in in April. The the the role was offered to me in May '24. I started in June '24. Before that, I was a Utah education network, and I was a trainer working with, districts across the state and charter schools across the state. And what I kept hearing from these collaborative communities, we we had a online group that meets once a month led by one of our community members named Emma Moss, who, by the way, if you're interested, you should follow her on LinkedIn. She does amazing work. She runs this collaborative community. One of the things that we heard from them, was our district techs and our
team directors and even our superintendents were saying, we know this is coming really quickly. We need cheap, effective ways to get artificial intelligence in the classrooms. Can you help? And so I pushed at Utah Education Network, along with a few of my colleagues to have a statewide AI RFP. That opened in April 2024. It closed in, and was finalized in late June and then was open for, excuse me, for purchase in August '24.
Basically, this allows any of our districts or charter schools across the state to buy three AI tools, that are geared towards education at a low cost. I can't say the cost because it's under Marco here in the state of Utah, so I apologize. But the the tools that we have are School AI, Magic School, and Skillstructs chat for schools. Those have been hugely popular. It has allowed a lot of our districts have and charter schools have adopted one of those three tools or multiple of those three tools because we were able to keep the cost down so low that some districts went, well, I can buy this
for my entire district for this cost. I could buy both or two of them. And so they have different tools for different levels and different needs, and we're seeing driven use across the state of Utah because of that. So it's not unusual for me to go into a classroom and talk to teachers, and they already are familiar with one of those three tools or one of the tools that are embedded in their ecosystem like Adobe, Google, or Microsoft, and the my the tools that are behind those. So it's kind of created this incredible ecosystem. UEN added a fourth tool last July in July, 2025 called Brisk.
So now we have four tools that districts and charter schools can purchase and move forward with in their schools. Again, it's created this wild ecosystem where we're able to see, teachers actually using these tools in classrooms pretty frequently. And what we've seen from adoptions, like, the companies that, create these tools have told me, they're seeing between 6070% adoption across the state, which is incredible for, AI development as we move forward. The next thing that we did was a series of AI summits across the state
of Utah. These, AI summits were in six different locations because Utah is, like Louisiana, a geographically large space. We wanted to make sure that we were, in those spaces that the teachers needed us to be in. What this led to were some of our locations were massive. We had, you know, two, three hundred people. Some of them were very small. Like Moab, Utah, we got 40 people, and we were very lucky to get 40 people. Because if you've ever been to Moab, it's a very small, school district. Grand County School District is very small. These summits were to take the temperature.
What is happening with AI in Utah in education? What do teachers and districts need? What kind of work are they seeing in their classrooms? So we invited the, the statewide RFP tools, again, SchoolAI, Master School, and Skillstruck to come out and join us as well as common good tool tools that the legislature had purchased like Adobe, Scribble, and a few others. And, basically, it came to, business ecosystem in that in that space where it allowed the, districts to ask lots of great questions and develop, a plan for what they
want to do with artificial intelligence. We've since done another series of six this last fall. Two of them focused on special education and artificial intelligence, which was, as far as we know, the first of its kind kind of summit around that. Those, two summits were incredibly interesting and engaging for our community. And the outcome was that a lot of those special education professionals are now going back and reevaluating how they do things, appropriately under the law. That was one of the big pushes was understanding where and why where and when
the limits of using artificial intelligence for developing things like an IAP are. And now we were able to enunciate those to teachers across the state, and that was incredibly helpful. The other four were for administrators. We did two specifically with charter schools and then two that were just open to any publicly funded school across the state. Those two, or those four brought in some of our holdout districts, and we're able to get policy from them now, which is pretty incredible. And the last thing, folks, is, some AI PD that we've done. And I mentioned that this has reached, around 7,000 teachers across the state of Utah.
We were also able to fund those administrative summits that I just spoke about a minute ago. And what we're seeing is incredible outcomes. I'll show you some of those here in just a minute from some of the preliminary documentation, but we just got back reports, on the preliminary, PD that we ran and then also the larger scale. And we are seeing, teachers self reporting that they went from, basically, two standard deviations up in their use of artificial intelligence and their comfortable nature with that as well. And so having professional development that is open and available to teachers around this, that
is free and will meet them where they want and what the needs they have in their classrooms, is really, really important. Again, we were able to do that with, basically half $1,000,000. I was able to hire some some colleagues to come in, and some some crew to come and help us do those over about a four month period. And we're still have the PD open. I'm still grading actively grading lesson plans, and and work that they're doing. So that gives you kind of a context of where we're at, as a state. I'm gonna give you a couple other things here in just a minute as well. If you're interested, folks, there is the link, the QR code to the USB framework.
I know, lots of other states have some sort of framework documentation and work that they've been doing around building, some, framework work. This is I I I I may be able to bias, but I love ours. I think we did a really good job on it, and it's been kind of evergreen since it was built. And I think that was the full purpose of that document. Now alongside that, I'm just gonna jump out of my presentation here for a second. I wanna jump over to our school schools.utah.gov. This is our website, folks. Again, schools.utah.gov.
I'll send a link to Regine afterwards. I did wanna show you guys, where to find this. If you're interested, you can go to schools and educators and then artificial intelligence here. We launched that again in in April 2024, but I wanted to show a secondary document that we just launched in October that is pretty interesting as well, a pair of documents. This is called the portrait of an AI infused educator and the portrait of an AI infused learner. These are collaborative documents that we built in the state of Utah with higher education, k 12. We had special education in the team, members of USBE, members of Utah Education Network,
parents, students, teachers, districts. It kind of ran the gamut. And basically, what the goal was is to take our portrait of a graduate, which we built in the state of Utah about five years ago, and we have competencies for those. And it's a beautiful document. And I wanted to create something that would enunciate the skill knowledge, skills, and dispositions around artificial intelligence in the state of Utah for educators and for our teachers. And so these documents do that. And I'm just gonna pull up the learner profile right here really quick and see
I've been showing this off to a few people. Again, these enunciate the knowledge, skills, and disposition. So in knowledge, we have AI literacy. We have data use and integration and safety principles. In dispositions, we have human centered use, curiosity and creativity, and critical thinking. And under skills, we have prompting and communication, machine and human collaboration, and adaptive application. The smaller skills and disposition are the same for the teachers as they are for the students, but how they're built and the structure around them is different because teachers need different skills than students sometimes. Each one has a brief enunciation of what that indicator is and then the key
concepts that go in that overall. The team that helped me build this thought it was very important that we didn't just leave it as here is what the indicator is and and what we're thinking about, but actually here are the key concepts in kind of a general order of learning, that could help support building this out. These two documents, as far as we know, were the first states to build this out. I think ISTE has a version of this that they launched this last summer. But we're very excited about this. Part of this project was also to is moving forward is to then build competencies around each one of these k to gray.
So that's something that I will be leading out that work in, March and April, hopefully, and we'll be able to publish this sometime the competencies sometime this year. Out of this work also, and I'm just gonna jump over to their website really quick, the University of Utah has a group called the responsible AI initiative. This is a $100,000,000 initiative that just got a big boost of another $50,000,000, which is pretty incredible. I'm on I sit on their board, and a couple of months ago, I was sharing the work around the portrait project that we did. And the team up there said this is incredible. Could we do this for business?
And so they're gonna be launching, I believe, in a couple of weeks, a portrait of an AI ready company and a portrait of an AI ready employee. In that work, I was there as the facilitator. I helped walked it through, but we had, people from Oracle, from NVIDIA, from AWS, and then also professors. We had students. We had lawyers. We had all sorts of groups in that that space for whole day developing, that portrait project. Again, showing the collaborative community that we have here in you the state of Utah.
The next layer that we're working on, hopefully, over the next couple of months is a portrait of an AI ready professor and a portrait of an AI ready college student so that we have this larger ecosystem showing kind of the what we expect for AI skills in the state of Utah. And, Matt, what Go ahead, please. The funding that you mentioned, what was the source of that funding? So the funding for the the the, professional development that we did, it's actually Intermountain Healthcare. You can see here on my slide. It's referenced right there at the bottom corner. The grant was given to one of my colleagues who sadly is now, has left
the agency. She wrote it in 2024 and then handed that work over to me a few months before she left. Currently, we're actually reef we we we what we found, it's very interesting. We expected so the the the process of the professional development is layer one is we'll go out to any school in the state of Utah face to face, meet with them, do a presentation, show them basically basic AI literacy and AI safety, and then maybe some demoing. That's where we got that 7,000 number. Layer two was an optional Canvas course that's that teach any teacher in the state
of Utah could take. That was about three to five hours that would elaborate on that and give them ideas. The third layer is to write a lesson plan on their content area and grade level that either teaches AI to students or teaches AI with students. We've got about 1,500 teachers that have gone through all three layers, and we've been able to pay them through DonorsChoose $200 for their lesson plans. Those lesson plans are gonna be published very soon. I'm it's a a lot of work to put them on a spreadsheet and get them ready for, you know, deployment on a website.
So and and my sadly, my hired colleague, Emma, she her contract ended about a week ago. And so I'm working on those. We're hoping to have those out very soon, and I'm in talks with Stanford and a few other universities to turn into a chatbot that any teacher globally could actually ask the questions about content or grade level questions. But we're we actually have extra funding based on that grant. I just talked to the funder, two days ago. We're gonna be, doing a bright spots project where we're gonna holistically work with schools, full schools, from administrator to teacher to parent, priming them and getting them ready for
artificial intelligence as well. So we're gonna be rolling that out over the next couple of months and then, hopefully, sharing the results, of that over the next, like, six months to nine months as well. Hope that answers your question. That's perfect. Yeah. Alright. So speaking of professional development folks, this is a few of the teachers that went through our PD program. You can see, this was our preliminary program, kinda see what we needed to do, what kind of questions. They got a little bit more time than an hour and a half, two hours. They got two full days. They were required to present their work, at a local conference called USET that happened
last March. These teachers, I'm gonna start on the top right. This is Alice from Alpine School District. She wanted to create, AI generated comic books around the the novel The Giver with her students, and you can see all the different comic books behind her on the posters. The teacher right below her, she, created a workflow with her students collaboratively around when to use AI in writing a paper. And then she developed that into a classroom policy that now has been used across her school as the policy, which is pretty incredible.
And the third teacher there with the kind of the green line underneath her poster, she had her students work with an artificial intelligence, chatbot. I think, believe it was SchoolAI, to identify a problem in their community that then they could research and write about. And then they created a diorama of their community and the things that they wanted to solve. And that's the the spot in front of her. The you can see above folks, this is the the what we saw from their first pre to their post, about one to two standard deviations up, and and we
saw that on every single indicator. Teachers are hungry for professional development, and, honestly, we were able to do most of it across the state, hitting again around 7,000 teachers, for less than a million dollars, and all of it was on grant funding. So if that's something of interest to this group, I'm always happy to to share the resources. We're we're open source here at USB so I can share those with you guys, or with a small collaborative group as well. So let's dig into some of the educational leadership, but also just the leadership across the state. So the big players here are we have the Utah State Board of Education.
We have the Utah Office of AI Policy, which I'll go in-depth into them here in a few minutes because they are really unique and just dynamic, wonderful organization. They got a lot of, national press yesterday because Utah was the first state to allow for AI to dispense medication through its, different systems. And so if you haven't seen the articles around that, folks, I I work with doctor Boyd who, approved that decision, which is pretty interesting. Then we have my role, Utah State Board of Education.
We have the RFP that I've talked about through UEN or Utah, education or telehealth network. And then we have our, UETN professional development, which has been incredibly helpful. I talk about the 7,000 that we were able to hit at USBE. UEN, told me recently that basically, for every, two people that they had come from them for professional development this year, One of them came from my classes. And so, they would add another probably between four and six thousand teachers to that that that number, it's which is pretty incredible.
So I wanna dig a little bit deeper into, again, this the USB, work that we've done. Again, it comes from that visionary leadership standpoint. We have, we have amazing leadership from superintendent Dixon that just retired. We have amazing leadership from superintendent Hart, but also our board. Over the last year and a half as I've moved into this role and I I I don't think I talked enough about and I'm terrible talking about my role, in terms of, you know, what we do. But my role is really unique, and I was, as far as we know, the first full time AI education specialist at a a statewide system like this in education.
I was basically building a plane while flying it over the last year and still feel like I'm doing that. So COVID taught me a lot of lessons around that one. My role is very much focused on three areas, which is working with policy makers, working with our districts and charter schools, and then also working with internal PD. And all of that comes back to the visionary leadership at the state board. Part of my role is is to work with our elected board members and get them up to speed on this. And over the last two years, I've spent time with almost every single one of them to answer their questions, to enunciate ideas, and to build capacity.
And it has paid dividends. Now that we're kind of digging into some legislative season over the next couple of months, a lot of our policymakers at the board, but then also at the legislature have been using language and sharing the ideas that, we've been enunciating in these trainings and ideas over the last year, which is pretty incredible. And, again, we've had a deep investment here in in Utah over the last few decades around visionary leadership and technology use, because those are tied together to help support
where we can go into the future with education. So let's start a little bit about the office of AI policy. This gets into some legislative work, that was before my time, but, thankfully, they only did it a few months before my time. So doctor Boyd, who runs the office of AI policy, he was hired just two weeks before I was hired. And one of our both of our first meetings together, happened, my my first I think in my first or second week of of work here at USPE. He's been a valued colleague. Doctor Boyd is a AI engineer. He came from bigger Brigham Young University, but has has worked at, UCLA, Chapel University
of North Carolina Chapel Hill. But, basically, where this comes from is, we had two representatives, or one senator, one representative, representative Jefferson Moss, who now who has stepped down from the legislature in here in Utah, but now runs the governor's office of economic opportunity, and then, senator Cullimore, Kurt Cullimore. They came together in late twenty twenty three and said we need to have some sort of regulatory capture program around artificial intelligence here in the state of Utah. And so they developed the the office of artificial intelligence policy.
This was ratified and pushed through the legislature in 2024 and came to being in May 2024. Again, just a few weeks before I was hired. Their goal is just two is two very large things. On one hand, as doctor Boyd puts it, he has a regulatory hammer. So if a company who has who builds artificial intelligence, and it's any artificial intelligence. So we've been talking a lot about education. Again, he works with medicine. He's worked with mental health. He's worked with a lot of different other areas as well.
And I've got he's always coming to me with, how does this affect education, which is really helpful. But he, this regulatory, hammer, if a company comes into them and it comes to them and says, we build artificial intelligence, but there is this law and code here in the state of Utah that is preventing what we think is a positive use of artificial intelligence. Doctor Boyd, through the Department of Commerce, has been allowed to say, I can pause or push for a change in the law in the next legislative session. He's very cagey about using the pausing, which I completely understand, but he's been very,
very good about helping build new new laws and code. Last year in our 2025 season, he was able to push through the, I believe, the nation's first set of law and code around mental health chatbots. So in the state of Utah, we actually have existing code around that. If you're interested, I can send that to you as model legislation. That code only covers mental mental health chatbots that were designed for mental health help, not chatbots that are being used for mental health.
So there's a big difference between those two statements, but it's been incredible to see that work happen. My board is currently looking at that code and thinking about how do we adopt this in k 12, where some of the problems and nuances there as well. The other thing that he works on, doctor Boyd and his team, he has a team of four. They're lawyers. They're researchers. They're collaborators. Really, really interesting engaging team. The rest of the the the the time that they work on is researching and developing, a research lab. So every year, they choose a few topics. These are the things that we wanna study this year that we think are are
going to be really interesting. And then that they will funnel that research into, legislative code and policy. The big thing that they're working on this year is deep fake technology and provenance. So the the ability to track women and where a a deep fake photograph photo was created and what kind of problems that creates over time. So they are putting that into, they have some code that they built. They're pushing through legislative process over the next few months, which is pretty important and incredible. So if you're interested, you can learn more at ai.utah.gov.
It is model legislation to, build this out. I would just say one of the things that I've been thinking about over the last couple of months is how the importance of having point to a community. As part of the work here in Utah, again, we have robust, business communities. We have headquarters, international headquarters for things like Adobe. But then also we have a lot of startups here in the state of Utah who are building AI tools, whether they be for education or not. And so, luckily, we've been able to dig into that community pretty fluidly and dynamically over the last couple of years.
And those companies are are such great collaborator collaborators for a lot of different reasons. Whether it be, you know, we need some space to host an event to, hey. We have this question about how AI works to, what are you building? What are you thinking about for policy? And so over the last few years, we've been able to really affirm some really great conversations and partnerships with the business community, but then also higher education. Currently, in the state of Utah, I I exist over on the k 12 side. We have another organization called Utah Systems of Higher Education or, Ushi that doesn't currently
have an analog for me. So that's been I've kind of filled that role a little bit. So I do a lot of work with higher education. I mentioned earlier and showed you the responsible AI initiative at the University of Utah. That was, is, I think, the flagship program here in the state of Utah. It's headed up by, a person named, professor, sorry, doctor Manish Parashar. Doctor Parashar, wrote part of the Biden's White House plan around artificial intelligence and the artificial intelligence bill of rights. It's he's a brilliant he got a brilliant brain, but they're also trying to help
out so many different communities. And that's what what's been really interesting working with these higher ed groups is that they're not just trying to turn the camera back on themselves, but they're trying to figure out how to collaborate out. And so being able to find opportunities for, business conversations, for, training opportunities to help with, updating standards in courses. That's been a big conversation over the last few months, as we've dealt with some grant work, which we'll talk about here in just a second.
It's trying to figure out how to to build better standards for teacher preparation programs around artificial intelligence. Some of you may be aware that, the federal government through the Department of Education put out, a few grants, fifths grant, in November for a few weeks. We were able to put together in a few because of these collaborative common communities here in Utah, we were able to put together a about seven grants. Sadly, most of them didn't get, we're we're still waiting to hear back in a couple of them, but most of them didn't get selected.
I'm very proud of that work, though. And and what's been interesting seeing those kind of oh, sadly, we didn't get the grant emails come in is that so many of our higher ed organizations and also businesses that were associated with, with those grants wanna keep working and developing these regardless of the grant. And that just again speaks to this larger ecosystem of collaboration between different ecosystems in the state of Utah. So that leads me to my last point here, and I I I'm I'm gonna try and finish by, 12:20, and then we'll leave you guys some time for questions.
And then I know there was a couple other agenda items too. I don't wanna step on those. But I wanna finish with what I think is one of the more hopeful and illustrative items here in the state of Utah. So I mentioned earlier that we did a series of AI summits. We did six of them, last year in 2024. We did another six here in 2025. I really believe in the the power of community and listening to the community. I always call it my temperature check. So I'm always trying to figure out ways to go out and be in the community, talk to them, hear what they're saying so that I can come back and
really develop work that impacts them. Because if I'm not doing work that helps my community, then why am I doing the work that I'm doing? And so these summits were incredibly illustrative of what our community Wanted here in the state of Utah. And I wanna share that with you. So right here, you can see there's a picture of me, my friend Todd Call, who's our director of strategic initiatives here at USB, a friend Val O'Brien, who is a UEN trainer. And we have lots of different presenters across the the board. But one of the big things that we were able to do is take a
series of snapshots. So I wanted to do something that would allow me to capture that temperature check. So we asked our our, participants over the course of the two weeks that we did these summits to write down ideas, and share ideas of what they needed and what they were thinking about artificial intelligence on post it notes and posters. Most of the time, if you ever done one of these activities, you do it. It's awesome. Somebody captures a little bit of the feedback, and then those go in the recycling bin. In our case, what we ended up doing was yes.
They ended up in a recycle bin, but we took pictures of every single post it and poster that we could find, myself and my assistant. And, basically, we were able to take those, plug them into artificial intelligence. We use Gemini. And it synthesized all of that information into a few things that our community wanted. And I wanna share that with you guys, here in the, in New Orleans or in, in Louisiana because I think it's important to see what real educators and administrators, community members, higher education, business, we had all those in this room, are saying about
what they need from artificial intelligence. And by the way, this formulated the guide for me for a year, and I was able to do this again just a couple months ago. I'm formulating that guide now for me. So the first thing that they wanted, folks, is ethical AI. They wanna have transparency and communication. They want AI ethics training. They want, cons they have concerns about appropriate guardrails and liability. These are all things that if you've been paying attention, especially over the last month, to some of the AI conversations and some of these builders who are creating, we really want ethical AI.
And that may or may not be something that we're getting from these builders and something that may be our responsibility as statewide workers to push back on. The other thing that they really wanted is AI that is constitutionalized and has ethical constraints that allows them to really dig deeply into, safe safety concerns. Number two was AI should support, not replace humans. Our governor, governor, governor Cox just, had our statewide AI summit, which was incredible. We had about 2,000 people come out.
He spoke at it, and he announced his, human centered AI initiative. So this this was a year ahead of this. We're looking for that that focus focus point of keeping the human as a central component. So teachers really wanted modeling approve appropriate use of AI. They wanted to focus on process over product. This is something I hear again and again from teachers who are using AI appropriately in their classroom is that it's shifting their mindset from, hey. I needed them just to create an essay or a video or maybe they're in
a CT class and they're doing a welding project too. I really wanted them to share their process. Because if I only value the product, then the process over time was devalued. But in AI world, if you can just create something, then that that product focus has disappeared. So they've started to value process and that development of process over time, much more fluidly and dynamically. Number three, folks, is they emphasize that student centered learning is key. They said everyone needs to have a voice.
They need to have personalized learning. And the theme of digital literacy came up again and again and again. Now in subsequent conversations with educators across the state and then also parents groups and, again, a lot of our constituent agency members. I would say it's not just student centered, but it's human centered and that professional development is needed for all layers of the ecosystem. So one of the things that I've been working on over the last couple months is figuring out how to get more training out to parents. Because if we train parents, we also train workforce. And so I've been talking to a few people here in the state of Utah
about how we we work those two components together over time and get them into a good place. Number four, folks, is any implementation of AI tools should be strategic and inclusive. Meaning, basically, they wanna teachers wanna organize rollouts that start small and grow, which we've seen in a lot of our districts and charter schools across the state. And, also, just thinking about the larger ecosystem here in Utah, we have seen over time over the last three years that it started out small with a core group, and it's just grown and gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. They also have highlighted the the the need for continual education for all stakeholders.
We we know, thanks to research done by many famous educators across the the the last twenty years, my favorite is Ken Robinson who always says, educate or professional development is not an expense. It's an investment. And we really have to remember that as we move forward with AI. The conversation around this anyone in this room can attest to this. The conversation around AI is volatile and always shifting. And so anything I told this on to a group of teachers on Monday. Anything I say today may shift in another couple of days.
And so we have to have PD, professional development and education, that continues, over the years. So I have made that a goal, and I continue to go out to districts and charter schools as much as I can even though that's supposed to be a much smaller part of my role. And the last thing, folks, collaboration is crucial. Our teachers really want, communication of expectations. They want administrator students, community members, all to be in the space together, and they want transparency and proactivity. And I think these are really important and to highlight.
A lot of times when we talk about educational technology or technology period, somebody may say, oh, this is blocked or not allowed. Well, there needs to be an example of why. And I share I always share this with teachers of, one of the stories from my past. When I was in the classroom, I used a tool called Flipgrid. Since defunct, it was bought by Microsoft. And I I did this thing called a a silent poetry slam, where the students came in. They scanned the QR code with their laptop, and they were taken to a flip grid, and they record their poem or wrote and record their poem.
And then they came back and voted on each other. So it was super crazy, and it worked so perfectly. I love that lesson plan. My principal loved that lesson plan. I told my district, tech director about that lesson plan. He went, that sounds great. Don't use that tool ever again, because they haven't signed a data privacy agreement. And so, I immediately went, he's trying to shut down my creativity, but really, he was trying to keep me safe. And so we in the state of Utah have taken a really big stance around transparency. One of the big ones is we do have data privacy laws on top of
FERPA and COPPA, that require data privacy agreements between companies and the districts or charter schools. So we wanna make sure that districts and charter schools and the teachers and parents all know about that and that we're proactive in sharing the information around approved tools. We again, we all know that this is a AI, especially generative AI, is a volatile tool, and we wanna make sure that we keep our teachers, our parents, our students safe in that conversation. So what's next in the state of Utah? We've got lots of developing projects, folks.
Again, PD is is continuing. We've got those 10 those grant projects. We're gonna be putting all of the lesson plans up on this website here, folks. You can see oh, whoops. I need to go back, not forward. Sorry, guys. We're gonna be putting up on this website, UEN, Emedia, over the next, hopefully, two months. And then we'll be working with some different groups to to get those lesson plans out, in a larger ecosystem, in chatbot form. We're, again, learning that higher ed is asking the same questions. And then finally, folks, just bringing it back to the end of or my beginning
of my presentation. Utah is thriving because of a historical trend of investing in innovation. We are collaborating every single day about this conversation and this topic and making sure that things are moving forward, and we are not gatekeeping our expertise. Everyone is sharing and developing that eco that, expertise over time to build some really interesting things that are happening. So with that said, folks, I believe I just hit my my twelve twenty limit there, or thereabouts.
And I just wanna leave some time for questions or adding on to anything that you'd like to to ask. And there's my email, matt.winters@schools.utah.gov. Yeah. So I can hear someone talking, but I couldn't quite grasp what they were saying. Sorry. That we missed about the last minute and a half of what you were saying is they were trying to, get our owl back at speed. So I apologize. Oh, thank you. Yeah. There I I see now, Rachel, the the difficulties with the feed. I just heard that as well. It sounds like I can hear you now.
Yeah. But but better connection, sir. Yeah. But we we did miss your file, culminating points. Oh, no. Okay. Can you hear me now? Are you guys okay now? Perfect. Okay. I'll reshare my screen really quick and I'll give you the last little points here. Where was the last thing you guys heard? I'm just wanna make sure I get going on that. Yeah. That's snitch. Oh, then what's what's next? Okay. There we go. Going back here. So mostly, I'm just gonna leave it on the what's next slide. I can go down here. The what's next for the state of Utah is really diving deeply into again, continuing
the PD, getting those lesson plans out, hopefully, in chatbot form. Office of AI policy is pushing through policy around, the deep fake provenance, question as well as a few other things over the next couple of months. And we're entering legislative season, so there's gonna be bills around AI that I'm sure I'm gonna have to answer questions on that I don't know quite enough about right now. The other thing that we're looking forward to is building those additional portraits that I enunciated, specifically the portrait of an AI ready teacher or professor, an AI ready college
student, and getting the business one out over the next couple of weeks. And then doing the, work around, the, portrait of a of of an AI infused learner and teacher and doing the competencies around that. And then just keeping up. There's so much happening all the time. And with that said, folks, there's my email address right there. I'll leave that up there for just a minute. Matt.winners@schools.u...gov. And it looks like the owl's working now, so I'm happy to answer any questions you guys have. Perfect. Thank you so much.
What a what a substantive presentation. You covered so much ground, and and and and remarkably economical amount of time. So thank you for that. We do some have some question, and and with the president Morrison's gonna start with those, if that's okay. Yeah. Thank you. So, president, you know, we kicked off this meeting, and I had the honor of introducing Matt. And I was very clear to everyone that, we would be here with very open mind if I was gonna cover everything Utah has done in this space. So, feel really good about that statement. So congratulations again.
I think it really stood out to me. I've got a list of questions here. I'm gonna hold on to two to give everybody else an opportunity. But but I'm just so impressed with the connectivity that you have across in our state of Utah and so many areas of interest, but then also the depth that you have, you know, with each one of those relationships. So I'm wondering if you have a work chart that you could share with us to give us some visible appreciation for that connectivity, across the state in this topic. Is that something that you guys have on hand or something you could share with us?
I don't have that on hand, but I that's mostly because a lot of this is just happening organically. So a couple of the groups do. So I I will say I I don't think they have it up, but I can I can look really quick? I'm on the wrong page there. Sorry. I believe the University of Utah has kind of an org chart around the REI that connects all the different communities together, and I'm part of their policy community, those sorts of things. But mostly, this is happening very organically. So, again, nothing's being gate kept by one person in the ecosystem. And so it's wild.
When one person needs somebody that's really of interest, then they introduce them to everyone else. So routinely, my email will be, harangued by six or seven different people I know in the community who are really good at networking and be like, this person, this person, this person, talk to this person. So I I love the idea of having an org chart. So I I think that's something maybe I'll work on and and develop over the next little bit, just to get that out, and share it out. I will point to this, though, and I'm gonna share my screen. And I I should've shared this with you earlier, because this is actually a really
good visioning of why why Utah is so ahead on some of the oh, that's a long link. Sorry about that. There we go. Why Utah is ahead on on some of these things? I I've mentioned Utah Education Network. They have been doing this innovative work for literally fifty years. They were a TV station that broadcast across the state, and did all sorts of incredible things that direction, teaching t students that don't have, the the, a teacher for a different content area.
Then they moved in over the the course of the last thirty years to being the ISP for the entire state in education and telehealth. And so just to show you, kinda illustrate, this is the network map, the interest infrastructure map here in the state of Utah for our Internet in schools and telehealth. And I know that's not an org chart, but it does show you how big this community is and how well developed we are. Just just to give you an idea, 400 gigabits per second, is our backbone here in most of the state.
Most of our students have that level of connectivity in their school. But even some of our smaller schools here in the corner of of, 4 Corners region. Just to give you an idea how big this area is right here, folks, who've never been to Utah. This is San Juan County School District. It is has just over 1,200 students, about, I think it's, like, 70 or 80 teachers. The area land area is about the size of New England, and it's an incredible space. Navajo Nation has part of a this is one of our smallest schools right here in the state of Utah, Navajo Mountain, which if you don't know Utah, there's this
giant geological feature called the Grand Canyon that causes a lot of problems. And this one happens to be in a really remote area of the Grand Canyon to get from their district office here in Blanding to Navajo Mountains. It's a six hour car ride. But just in October, we were able to get hardwired Internet to that school. And so that shows you kind of that illustrative feature of what we've been able to do in Utah. And I'll work on that org chart and see if I can get that to you over the next couple of months. Thank you. I appreciate that. My my second question, and I'll and I'll, deal with the others in our group,
is, you made a number of references to, AI implementation. My notes here got 60 to 70% adoption, two standard deviations of implementation. But I'm really interested in if you guys come up with a way to some sort of metric where you could measure the value. And I would focus my question strictly on k to 12 education and specifically to educators and students. Have have you come up with a way to to measure the incremental value for students whenever teachers are able to successfully leverage the tools to support the curriculum presentation?
And then also, have have you considered some way, some sort of metric to recognize the value for educators? Great questions both side on both sides of this. I I and it points to kind of a traditional problem that we're seeing in educational technology period, which is educational technology comes in. It's teachers see it at a conference or, you know, wherever online, whatever social media platforms they're on, and they wanna bring it into their classroom. And it doesn't necessarily have efficacy around it. It's the new hot tool.
And AI is three years old. Generative AI is three years old as a commercially viable technology. We know the ecosystem for, higher education and researchers to go through and provide efficacy is usually between five and ten years. And so we're on a shortened timeline. One of my quiet goals behind all of this that I've been working on, with the office of AI policy is we do have a research collaborative group that meets once a month to talk through problems of practice around, researching in education and AI.
And we have universities from all over the globe that come out and join us for this. So we're trying to hunt down the problems on this and trying to figure out those metrics right now, Ronnie. One of the big barriers is having sites that are able to we're able to say there is some sort of conditions that are met around artificial intelligence implementation. So part of the work that we've been doing over the last couple years is stage setting. So if if our our districts don't have the tools in play or our our schools don't have the tools in play, they can't implement them in the classroom.
So our RFP has been able to solve that problem to some degree. Also legislative funding around some other tools as well. So we know that these tools are in classrooms, and they're starting to develop teachers are trying to develop workflows around them. Training is needed around AI best practices. So that's where this the 7,000 teachers that we've been working with comes into play as well. The next layer that we're working at and this is what I didn't go into this in-depth. I basically said it was bright spots work. But, we have I get about $200,000 dollars left over on that grant that I
mentioned earlier. And one of the the I just got approval on this two days ago, so it's very fresh. I'm still developing it. But what we're going to offer is, working with we're gonna find some administrative teams at schools, about 15 to 20 of them, that would like to go through a large scale, long term professional development cycle. It'll start with training the admin to then train their teachers around artificial intelligence, then the teachers are going to be required to train x amount of parents in their community.
So PTC or, like, a parent's night, those sorts of things. And then we'll be funding them based on percentages and things like that. The goal of that underneath all of it is to look at test scores and, I guess, assessment data at those schools pre and post to see if there is a noticeable change in how they were using that. That technology and that that administrative technology or that administrative training actually made those changes that we were hoping for. So check back with me in about a year, and I'll have some answers for
you on that. But the the again, the goal is there's not been enough there's been some a a good branch of research around EdTech, but a lot of it has been not this this layer of let's dig deeply in with the community and see if we can actually tie it to assessment scores. And so that's something that we're really trying to do here in the state of Utah, with a lot of our collaborative partners. And so we're hoping to have and see some results of that over the next six to nine months. Thank you. Thanks, Matt. Hi. Rebecca Gallo from Ben Franklin High School here in, Louisiana.
I have a couple of questions and one is a little more specific about what Mr Morris was asking when you mentioned that metric for tracking ai, is that something you all created survey data wise or were using an existing metric? And then my second question, and this kind of happened when our owl was breaking up, so I think you hinted on this. But when you come up with a list of tools that you allow, how do you make sure it's meeting, like, PII and FERPA recommendations? Great questions. The first one, so I'm relying on the companies who create those tools to feed
me where what they're getting from use usage. Now I'm getting those maybe once every six months. But we're trying to figure out UEN holds those contracts. So just kind of this is going to the org chart that Ronnie brought up earlier. UEN is a separate org than USB. So we work a lot together, but they hold the contracts and they hold those metrics. And sometimes it's, you know, things get lost in translation. So we're trying to figure out a way to to along with our CEO, his name is Spencer Jenkins over at UEN, to provide better metrics for usage around not
just these tools, but any EdTech tool that's licensed in the state of Utah. So, again, I'm relying mostly on the companies who create these tools to say 80%. I'm a little cagey on that. I get closer to the 60% mark. They get closer to the 80% mark. It just kinda depends. That's mostly because there are thresholds in the state of Utah around legislative purchasing, and so some of these companies are very interested in that legislative level. Now for the other question that you answered, there's a very tangible, law based rule around this.
So in the state of Utah, any educational technology tool that is brought into a school environment has to sign a data privacy agreement between the company and the local educational agency. So that's a district or charter school. That data privacy agreement is what we call an NDPA version two with an exhibit e. That is a nationally known through the SDPC, data privacy agreement. Now not every tool does that. Some of the tools are, have their own data privacy agreement, and they I'm working with some of those companies to have the, the push to sign ours because we
wanna make sure that we're keeping our students safe and their PII safe. But then on the flip side of that, there are companies that have gone through, like, UEN or legislative processing to get, contracting in place, and they go through data privacy checks at kind of a statewide level. So UAN has done those data privacy checks with the University of Utah. And so a lot of our districts rely on those. UAN or USB is okay with that as well. They mean what we call the floor of data privacy. So there are, if a teacher or a school decides not to sign a sign
a data without privacy agreement with the company, that provides that safety and security around PII, student data, teacher data. Then if they choose to use that tool, then they are actually in breach of contract, and they could be, pulled in front of disciplinary committees here at USP because of that. So we really are pushing and enforcing this. Luckily, through the the legislature, they were very smart when they built built this, particular set of code. If one district signs a DPA in that NDPA version two with an exhibit format,
then any district can license that DPA with one click on our consortium. So let's say that I'm gonna I heard Magic School was in the room. Let's say that they they buy Magic School. They sign the DPA with them. Then every school in the district or sorry, in the state can click one button on their their consortium website, and they license that same data privacy agreement. And all parties get a an email about that, the company USB in the district. So that's that's been a big thrust of my conversation with teachers.
In fact, the training that we do, there's a lot of basic AI stuff. And then we spend about twenty minutes on data privacy, security, DPAs, just so that teachers are really aware of this. And it's been really interesting to see the aftereffects of that. We've gotten emails from curriculum directors and tech directors. They're like, my teachers are asking if our tools are in their data privacy agreement. They I told them that they are, and they're really worried about this. Like, can you assure them? And so we we've gone on and done some trainings with them to make sure that the teachers know, yes. You're okay to use these tools if your district says it's fine.
So, hopefully, that answers your question. Nancy. Hey, Matt. Nancy here from Delta two. I have a question about the survey results. So y'all in your digital teaching and learning grant program, you had over 8,000 participants, about 7,500 teachers, 700 school administrators, and a 100 district ones. How were they asked to, like, was it a stipulation of getting the grant award money, or was it just, you know, by choice to do it? And then, how did y'all did y'all develop these survey questions yourself versus based on
the big preexisting, like, national type, survey? Great question. So, the survey or we get so it is a stipulation of the grant to have the it goes out to the technology directors in the districts first. They then send it out to all the air admins, and they send it out to their teachers. So at that point, they we wanna get a large scale. And, honestly, like, we get about 25% of our teachers in the state that fill it out every year, about half of our administrators. And that's that's just because the the tech directors have that sway in their districts
to make sure that it's filled out. So I I'm not a 100% sure on when it gets out to the teachers if the the tech directors are allowed to say it's optional. But I can ask the, the the people who run that program refer to me as their cousins, so I'm really, well acquainted with them. So I can reach out to them for you, and and we can talk it through. The other side of the question that you asked, was about the metrics and the survey questions. We actually developed those with the group that we hire every year to basically work
through that survey methodology and build that website. It's called the Materi Group. The questions change every year to some degree, although we are looking for longitudinal work over time. So some of the questions around AI have shifted a bit because we're looking for new things, but a lot of them have stayed the same so that we can see and track those questions over time. Like, the policy question has stayed the same so that we know, hey. In 2024, it said this, but 2026, it's saying this. So that way we can get some longitudinal data out of it.
And and, largely, that's what we've been get able to get. Just to give you an idea of how powerful that program is, last year, it got heavily challenged in the legislature. They wanted to eliminate it. The, accountants at the legislator legislature came to the legislators and said, do not eliminate this program. It's one of the best of the state at accountability, and it's having some of the best, results, from legislatively funded money. So, hopefully, that answers your question. Yep. Thank you.
Yes, ma'am. Representative Slagle. Hey, Matt. This is Laura Schlegel. I'm the state rep here. I had a question on your office of AI policy. I know you said that it has a regulatory, arm. How do y'all now navigate that with administration's executive order and no longer wanting the states to regulate in this area? That is a a wonderful question. I'm glad you're asking that today. If it would have been yesterday, I would have totally punted on that, because I would have not had an answer. Currently, the the the positioning is that we're gonna continue onward with it as far
as I understand. But that may be open to to to some conversation. I I I'm not this is purely speculation, but a lot of what we're doing is collaborative work with these companies and with the the regulatory plans. So I don't know that I I I I'm I'm not sure how bad that would be, because it's very collaborative work, and and tossed down. If you would like to dig into that more deeply, I can do an introduction to doctor Boyd and his office. I don't know what the where the where they're at in in conversation the federal
government around that EO, though, other than to say, as far as I understand, it's business as usual. Thank you so much. Yes. I would like to Yeah. Other questions? It's good. Good morning. I, my name is Conrad Patel. I'm with Bessie. My question is let me phrase it this way. The biggest, driver that I perceive of our applications of of AI is to create prosperity for the people of Louisiana. So we backed out from that high level and say that, what we're working on
here is a collaborative effort between business, post secondary education, whether it be vo tech or traditional college, and, of course, k to 12. So what I didn't hear maybe I maybe you said it and it gets muddled in, in the in the OWL. But what what what efforts has Utah undertaken to collaborate between those three or four different groups so that there's a push in the common direction that we're moving not
just higher ed over here pushing this way and k 12 over here pushing this way and the business community's kinda just all over the place. But I guess what we wanna try to accomplish, what I wanna try to accomplish at the end of this process is some commonality in our efforts, some alignment of efforts so that we're all pulling the train in the same direction. And I'm just curious and like I said, you may have hit upon that. I missed it. But, if you had a couple of comments, I'd appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I I don't know how well I I hammered on that, but I would say
first and foremost is that, again, the main players in this conversation, we collaborate, if not daily, weekly. And it's creating that cohesion, across the board. Whether it be higher ed, legislature, office of AI policy, myself, in k 12, those sorts of things. We're all talking to each other very, very frequently along with business to push forward that net narrative and those directions that we wanna go. Now in part of that is feeling it's that that process of what are the
things that we actually want to to get out of these conversations around AI and helping to find the the right expertise in the community to make sure we have the right things in play. Now on top of that, there are some legislative and governor pushes around this. The governor did launch his human centered AI program. You can see that on the governor's website here in the state of Utah in December. It's very much focusing on the work that all of the the parts that I just talked about are doing. So he mentioned the work that I'm doing in k 12, specifically the portrait of
an AI infused learner and teacher, the work that we've done collaboratively with higher education, the RAI, the work that's happening at the office of AI policy. We do have a program that's coming out through, the governor's office of economic opportunity. Represent former representative Moss, now, chief Moss over at that organization is leading up an initiative that's going to tie together innovation, business, and, education and all in one space, down at Point Of The Mountain. It's it's Southern South South part of Salt Lake City.
It's gonna be a physical location with a data center, and the the whole point is to create innovative, pathways. And so I'm not as familiar with that because it's been it was just announced right before winter break. I'm coming to terms with that, and so I could follow-up with you on that conversation. But But what I would just say is that any movement that we see in the state of Utah, there's a collaborative thread going back behind it, not just from one organization, but from multiple organizations to see where it goes, and to help propel
it forward into the future. And so I'm very proud of that because it shows that there were there's we may be able to go in a lot of different directions, but it all comes back to that commonality of we work together, we share the expertise, and we're all trying to push that that that goal forward. Whether it be, again, through business development, education at k 12, higher education priorities with grants and research, all the way up to legislative, code and getting laws made. So, hopefully, that answers your question a little bit.
There's no physical structure. There's no committee or or driving. It sounds like it's a voluntary alignment of groups pulling together. It's a lot of different groups that are voluntary coming together and working together in concert with each other. In terms of, like, a larger, concerted effort that is multilevel like this one is, I would say the closest we get is probably the RAI at the University of Utah because they're they're hitting on so many different avenues. But I'm seeing that start to shift. One of the big one of the big goals last legislative season that sadly was
not met was to create a AI and education task force that would have pulled in a lot of these community members in one place. It sadly did not get through on the last day. I believe they're trying to push that through again this year, so we may see that kind of work happen in the legislator. Thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Matt, nice to see you. I have one one one last question. Kind of talking about the responsible AI sitting in that room with, the leaders from all the great AI companies, other legislators. What do you think is the fuel that brings them together into that room?
What where do you see the ROI specifically for the companies that are in that room? I think for and and with Utah and ROI on that is being able to get to a place where they're actually able to say, there's a statewide investment in this conversation. When I talk to companies and we're able to get them to come to events like the AI summit that happened last month or because we were able to pull in, representatives from all the major, like, local corporations, but I was also able to get the North American head of Google for education to come out. We were able to get OpenAI to come out and have these conversations with us
because they see Utah as a site as a global site for innovation and understandings around artificial intelligence. There's that investment there both in terms of, legislative process, capital. We have a great organization called Silicon Slopes that's pushing forward, the business side of artificial intelligence. But then on top of that, there is a community to support different layers of adoption and use. So I often get, kinda alley oops conversations, introductions from companies that are interested in
working in education that come from higher ed or from the office of AI policy or from the legislature because they're they need to understand what a debt privacy agreement is, how they work in Utah schools, those sorts of things. And so there's a superstructure here in Utah of communication around this. And I think that's what makes it so valuable for a lot of companies to come out and see, and be a part of. Yes, sir. I have a question. Hi. I'm Steven Goebel. I teach, computer science at Kedoka High School. Early in the presentation, you mentioned that there is, like, a statewide RFP process for
AI tools. Mhmm. And later, you mentioned districts signing individual agreements. Are districts limited to those tools that are, statewide adopted? What is the, what is the sort of process through which that kind of Yeah. That's a great question. So we wanna we like, we're local every state is a local control state. So I'm just gonna start with that. Local control is a real thing. And our districts and our charter schools make decisions about what tools they wanna work with. We wanna make sure that there are pathways. If there is a tool that is being kind of used kind of in a
larger scale in the state of Utah, the the the the price on that can be dropped so that's, essentially cheaper or free for our teachers. So that's where the the RFP process came from. We had so many of our tech directors come together as, over 60% of them said, we really want some sort of safe, cheap, effective AI tool in our classrooms. And they, as part of the RFP process, selected not one but three tools, and they push for more going forward. Excuse me. And so they have the opportunity to purchase those tools at a consortium price.
We don't push or force them to do that, but the floor of data privacy is assured through UEN and and the University of Utah. As far as other AI tools, every district and charter school in the state has the ability to sign on to different tools that they would like to to use. But I am always here as a resource, and I almost on a daily basis, I'm helping out with this, making sure that they are following data privacy, getting them in contact with the right companies, the right representatives, those sorts of things so so that we can move the conversation forward, for that individual district.
Because as a computer science teacher, you know this, you may need different tools than a math class or an English class. And we wanna make sure that the the tools that are available in Utah schools meet the the the thresholds of data privacy and they're safe and secure, but also that, hopefully, we can get them for a cost that are is much more effective than, the open market. Okay. Well, Matt, we can't thank you enough for the amount of time that you put in putting this presentation together. I doubt it was the first time you've given it.
But, and thank you for entertaining so many questions. Folks, if it's okay, in interest of time, we'll we'll shift to the next agenda item, and that's just kind of an update from each of the chairs on the deliverables to I just get some update. Don't expect anything to finality today. Right? But just we're making progress towards our February meeting. And, miss Williams will help us get that on the books as soon as possible. If it's okay, we'd like to hear from from each of the chairs and start with miss Davis. Just go in and over there. Yeah. Thank you. Farah's fantastic and powerful Yeah. We're going to get as far as you've all got in the next two months.
Fantastic. Yeah. We've we've had some initial conversations, and then we're aligned that it's really important. We're driving the policy and implementation recommendations deliverable. It's really important to build on the work that's actually laid out in our December meeting, and and initiatives that they're undertaking and the pushes that they're going forward on in the department is the is the engine that's going to make any of this happen. And so understanding where they're going, and and riffing on that and making suggestions to
enhance that is sort of the core we're trying to accomplish. The few things that have stood out as early thoughts are, the the student and teacher guidance around student and teacher AI competencies that hooks into the policy that's been passed around computer science. Don't wanna reinvent the wheel, and there's a vehicle that carries some really important, guidance for schools and districts. We wanna definitely take advantage of that. As Matt laid out, there's just a a pervasive and multifaceted need for training at
every level of the school building and the district administration. I think it's completely unrealistic about, a major appropriation to drop back in a lap without the OE and say, go forward and train all these folks. So understanding what are they able to to really nail and deliver on that spectrum, on that continuum, and, be sure that the best that can goes into that. And then that this four group can uplift other areas where the rest of the ecosystem or in an event where there there is, you know, an appropriation, there is
resources made, towards that, that there's also a prioritized list of what we think their the next bites the apple would be. And then the the third thing that we started talking about is, you know, to the extent that there there is funding, put towards tool adoption. And, actually, I I love the the share of purchasing work that Utah is doing, but to the extent that there's, dollars worth of that. I'm interested in just making sure that schools know, how to how to access that. And in particular, LDOE has a a mechanism for offering, alternative evidence based options when
you use federal dollars to buy tools and schools. I think there's some uncertainty about how to leverage that so that the dollars that they have available can be the teachers. So those are the thoughts we're gonna keep talking about. Yes, sir. Yeah. So, Davis, I really expect, a lot of the, I expect a lot of value to come out of this work group, and I expect a lot of that to to be embedded to this next legislative session. And, hopefully, it's gonna be a lot of traction there. But one of the main questions could be with which you brought up is that
training and the cost for that treasure. Do do you think you guys would be able to come up with some sort of range, you know, with the cost of that trend that that we could be able to share with legislators so they have some appreciation for what that would look like? Ashley, you want to tag team them? Yes. I do not. Yeah. Me and Ashley can do it. Great. Numbers. Right? Right. Right. Got it. To be honest, I think that there's a there's a lot of efficacy in these portraits that Utah's created. What is a portrait of AI prepared back to the teacher? Yeah. And the school student in a business, that that that's a great idea, and it
helps provide some, a a little bit of clarity around what can be a very ambiguous topic. Right? And if you can do that, it makes it easier to get your arms around. The expectation. Right? Exactly. That's good. So the next one was, the, the, item to figure that one to, miss Bruce. Sorry. So you have the portrait, and I'm gonna have the frame frame. Perfect. So Work. I I agree. I I think we agree wholeheartedly after Ashley's presentation of your last meeting that the
only place that we do put this AI curriculum is in the computer science curriculum, which is already mandated by law. Right? So it's the best place to put it. And if you if you're paying attention right now, a lot of developers are losing their jobs because they're getting replaced by AI. So we already have the curriculum in place, and it's it makes no sense for us to say, oh, we're not we need as many we're scientists, but we could use that same that same app, or that curriculum to teach for AI. Same thing.
So it's a win win. We also talked about or implemented in the framework that maybe it's not just about computer science, people that are gonna graduate and go to computer science, but I know the governor's vision is to get more people in the trades because not everybody's gonna make 25 in the ACT. Right? So we need people coming out of trade school and high school and give them the AI skills they need. I mean, even an HCI guy needs to know how to remember my smart thermostat, the thermal thermostat, and to use the different instruments.
They're gonna probably have AI in them to balance flows. Or if you go to work for a utility, you're gonna be working with smart meters and operation technology at the rec station or at the substations, those kind of things, and that's straight out of high school. So we need to figure out what their needs are, get them internships. They just said that there's already internships. And it sounds like a lot of this is already in play in the field, so we just need to maximize what's already there. So we came up with four tenets, which are awareness and foundation through AI, pedagogy,
applied skills and innovation, responsible use, ethics for thinking. Number four, support, evaluation, and leadership. And number five is the pathways and partnerships with the future to get our kids ready for the workforce. They're ready for secondary education. So and we did that. And we did these four tenets for the students, for the teachers, and for the food system leaders. And then we matched the pathways with the computer science standards, Louisiana, digital EdTech plan
and the digital literacy literacy core competencies. And then we placed it in, so how to test what it thought. And it thought that, this is one of the best plans for me to have. Yeah. So, I've met with my peers on the Louisiana Legislative Youth Council. So that's 31 students from all across the state, and I shared with them the proposed framework, and they unanimously agreed. I also have been interviewing my teachers and some of my school system leaders, and everyone's really behind it, really invested. And we agreed that it should be a computer science major.
Yeah. I've been really excited. Is is this something that, could be, integrated into a portrait, for students that, similar to what Matt spoke to for Louisiana? I think that yeah. I think that's gonna be great. I love that. Yeah. I've been doing some more. You know, we've only had three and a half weeks since our last meeting, and twelve days of that were the days of Christmas. So, yeah, that that seemed really good. Or but if there was Steve, go. So we've had, Matthew and I have had some conversations on, shared document about some
of, like, the nature of the task itself. So, obviously, establishing criteria for safe AI tools, but is that something that the state tries and it's statewide? Sort of what, Matthew talked about, Utah's approach to building a new district could evaluate, and talk about how if one district signed an agreement, any other district could give you that off of that seems like a really great approach. But Matthew has some, expertise on the some of the criteria. Right. So in OTS, we we do evaluate lots of tools.
And so the problem with evaluating any software tools specifically, it's a very moving part. And what's acceptable today may not be as a product evolves. Yeah. And and, also, what we found is how one person wants to use something and how another person wants to use it. Same tool can be totally different outcomes and different risk profiles. So I think we're gonna we're looking at some core criteria, mostly risk based assessment that you can do for for tools to give some idea of whether or not the tool is in a general framework of acceptable use.
And, mister Williams, I sent you an email because I would love to see a copy of the RFP. I assume there are some baseline criteria in there, of what Utah was looking at for for a collaborative tool. But your general ones are gonna be the ones everyone cares about, Things like data privacy, security bias, things like that. So we also are trying to align this to any, state or federal policy that makes sense. So specifically, we brought up the the White House's executive order for AI policy. The state has some criteria.
The Department of Education has criteria. Wanna make sure that aligns. But, I don't think we've solidified exactly on what a clearing house looks like yet, but, we have some some some basic guardrails established and and defined. So, looking forward to seeing how this how we keep working. Yeah. I love that criteria based approach to to to inform and to help. And then I it might be and I'm I'll take this on myself to get some clarity on, the EE the the executive order on regulation and how that applies to us. Most of that is geared towards commerce, and and we're not talking about regular commerce
perspective. But there is there's mobile app there, and I think you can get some clarity from that. We've got great resources back to that. Thank you. Go ahead. Next is Vanessa. It's number four. Yeah. Absolutely. So, this number four was to recommend an AI index that defines competency levels and tracks proficiency growth across rules. So I think we had a really compelling, discussion last meeting around this and how, you know, perhaps the AI innovation index wasn't, the right tool. So then that got our group thinking. And the first question we asked was, well, what are we actually trying to measure?
Because the deliverable says competency and proficiency. The AI index was more of a pulse quick, like, attitudinal survey. So it kind of got us all thinking about, like, what do we actually want to measure? And so we we said, okay. We're not sure what we wanna measure, but these are the four things we could measure. So actual AI literacy, knowledge and competency, which would be through industry based credentials, micro credentials for teachers, you know, actual demonstration of AI skills.
The second was a perception of AI use and, attitudes towards AI. The third was, actual AI enhanced learning, academic outcomes. So if you use, a mirror learning, does your actual English score improve? So it has nothing to do with AI literacy, but, educational outcomes in core subjects with AI enhanced learning.
And the fourth one was about AI implementation. So at the district kind of policy level, what are you doing at that level? So those were the four things that we thought could be measured. And in conversations with Thomas who was, Thomas Labor who gave the presentation, last time about the AI index and conversations with people on this committee, and obviously my team was very instrumental in this, we decided that, the one and four were the two that we thought should be focused on. So that would be the actual AI, knowledge and competency.
And then the the fourth one was that system readiness. And so we kind of, we opted for those because our goals were to try to leverage existing data structures. We didn't want to try to add extra work onto the districts. We wanted objective verifiable data. We wanted to preserve local flexibility, so we didn't want to say, like, you had to do it a certain way, but to just kind of understand what the local, schools and districts were doing and to just avoid new reporting mandate.
So those were kind of why we we approached it that way. So, this would basically we kind of put together a matrix to try to understand what what would be acceptable evidence, to demonstrate those things. So we have students, teachers, and districts and the three levels are preparedness, exposure, and proficiency. And so within those categories, what would qualify as acceptable evidence demonstrating that you're prepared?
What would be evidence showing that you're exposing your students, teachers, and districts to AI? And what would what would be the acceptable, evidence that you had proficiency in AI? And so that was kinda how we framed it. The AI enhanced learning of English using an AI tool is an important measure, but we thought that that would be tied directly to the direct student services AI grant. Right? So if a school's saying, hey. I want money to implement a mirror learning that one of the conditions of the
grant would be well, you gotta let us know if your English scores improve and maybe also do a survey like what Matt had with his with his grant. So that that that that piece is important but would not really be, independent because it's very clue specific and very implementation specific. The list of what the evidence is, I think, is something that we need to talk about and figure out and it's gonna always change, but we've come up with some some ideas there. So that's the overall recommendation. Sure. That's yes, sir.
Yeah. One one of the major, concerns that were raised when we discussed this last time was implementation Yeah. And taking kind of away from classroom instruction and so forth. So I wondered if you guys got to that. Yeah. Yeah. So so none of these are asking them to do anything extra other than to report it. And so, you know, for example, does a school have an AIV identified? Right? A school would maybe report that, and we were thinking maybe through the super app
or, you know, that there would be some reporting piece. So, yes, someone would have to take Little bit of time, but it wouldn't be instructional time. So do you have an AI lead? Have you adopted a district level AI policy? Do you have, implementation of approved AI tools at your school? Have your teachers participated in an AI PD? Have they earned a micro credentials? So it's really more of, like, reporting what you're doing. Administrative. Administratively reporting. And then for schools who want that proficiency piece. Right? Like, maybe you do implement more classroom instruction with AI and they can earn an
industry based credential. So that's certainly part of it, but none of this should really take away from instructional time. It's more of reporting. And and as we're developing these, measures and evidence, it could be optional reporting. Right? I mean, we don't think that we should mandate anything at this point. But the idea is that we would try to get together some approved evidence sources, kinda similar to what Matthew was saying about, like, what is some, you know, approved
framework? Like, what does that look like for the schools in terms of not a specific AI tool, but a measurement of your preparedness exposure and proficiency, you know, and which which is kind of what the AI index was going for, right, with its questions. It was trying to get that, are you not prepared at all, prepared, you know, slightly exposed to it or proficient? But instead of having it be a self reported survey, these are some data points. These are the, like, approved evidence sources, which still need to be defined, right, that
would indicate your level. Would you have any any idea what your timeline could potentially look like to roll something like this out? I mean, I think that we would need a group to agree on what those appropriate, you know, evidence measures are knowing that those will change. And like I said, we've got about 10 identified as a group. And then it's just getting into the schools to ask, like, hey. We need you to report these 10 numbers. How many of your teachers are going to an AIP? How many of your students are taking one of these credentials? You know?
So it's, once Doable. Sorry? Doable. Doable. Doable. Thank I love the level of objectivity that that brings to That was what we were really looking for. It's like, what is objectives that's not adding a huge extra burden? It's just reporting what you're doing. That was the goal. So five was headed by that, doctor Caldwell. Paul? Okay. It's liberal deliverable five developed strategy for alignment and collaboration among k 12 education, higher education, and taught us to teach your education, industry technology partners, Louisiana workforce commission, development
of the Department of Economic Development, state legislators, and the governor. And, my team consisted of, Dustin Gaspar, Osmar Padilla, and Andy Quicke. And my apologies to Andy. I had an invalid address that never bounced back invalid. So, hey, everybody at Entergy knows our secrets. So, my apologies, Andy. You're you're gonna be hearing this for the first time. So, we started off with a a little bit of a road map, and this has been said multiple times in this, committee defining AI literacy.
That that's gonna be our number one. What AI related competencies should we reasonably expect at the end of high school, maybe the beginning of high school, the end of high school, entry to post secondary or interest entry to workforce. There's going to be tiers of competencies or perhaps even gateways. Well, you did not quite make it to here. Maybe you need to repeat something before you can go to the next step. Without without really digging into the curriculum, I think there are ways ways to do
this that would be smooth, sort of like where you're going, Vanessa. It is it's the what you're doing, how you're doing, but we're not over reporting. And we're not over, dictating the curriculum either. Define skill expectations across the education to workforce, pipeline. What skills do teachers need to give students the skills they need to enter post secondary education and or the workforce? And create a feedback loop from industry and workforce outcomes back into education. What needs to be aligned across k 12, higher ed and workforce so learners experience
continuity rather than fragmentation as AI expectations evolve? I'm sure you have heard things like, why am I learning this? I'm never gonna use it. Or, you know, I complained about this and I never used it. You know? I'm I'm in my whatever however old you are, and I never used such and such. And making that feedback loop to make sure that we really are staying relevant there. I added some existing resources that we can tap into moving forward because I believe
in, working smarter, not harder. The k 12 thrive framework, grow, achieve, thrive, It, that it it includes work based learning, w b l incentives. Higher education, the board of regents has the momentum framework. We also have dual enrollment. Our dual enrollment courses are taught by university faculty. What better way to have a university faculty member in that school training the teacher and the students all at the same time? So leverage dual enrollment.
Of course, bulletin seven forty six and bulletin nine ninety six will need a little bit of work and a little bit of adjustment on that. But that will be down the road. Industry partners and tech partners, there are states and I'm embarrassed to say, I do not know if Louisiana does this or not, but there are states that give tax incentives to companies who provide mentors to k 12 students. So, basically, these industry partners would mentor k 12 students and provide necessary labs or
equipment, whatever it might be, you know, maybe be more broadband. I don't know. So think about tax incentives for industry partners and tech partners for mentoring k 12 students and giving them not only the certified teacher in the classroom, but a partner there. And, I heard Evelina say she did a little co pilot. I did a little Gemini. And, a workforce education council or some sort of name, a committee definitely not this big. This is a huge committee, but it would be your one stop shop for guidance,
approval, authorization, whatever. So I would say governor's office, board of regents for higher education, and that would also include teacher education, Louisiana Department of Education, and Louisiana Works, of course. And, that would take care of everything from basically cradle to grave. And it would take care of, of a of a one stop shop. So, basically, we based it on, as Dustin called them pillars, three pillars, defining AI
literacy, skill expectations, and a feedback loop from industry back. And, happy to have Dustin or Andy. I think it was more sneaked out, but, don't be in and add anything. I'd like to yes, sir. I'd like to pick up on that last part about the committee. And then one of the I've been in this business a long time, politics. And one of the great leaders in Louisiana has always been we have too many silos here. Mhmm. So we've never worked together. That's what I was asking the gentleman from Utah. And that committee sounds like an answer, but it it may need to have a
bigger, directive than what y'all talking about. Mhmm. And it might need a few other participants such as the board of education. That's that's in weeds, of course. Mhmm. But I I just wanna, say that I think that's probably the best thing that you you got going. If we could break down the silos Yes. I mean, this is an ad hoc committee. It's gonna disappear in March or whatever. There's nothing that takes place. Mhmm. So if you can get the administration, the legislature, business, and education working together to
break down the silos that have already traditionally existed between them Mhmm. And pull this train in one common direction, I think that'll be huge. Best thing we've done, maybe. And so I just wanted to, compliment you for that and say that I think you need to to make it a little bit broader and deeper A little bit broader. Okay. And give it more authority Mhmm. Which would come from the administration and legislature. And then maybe it needs to be statutorily created. It might be like disappear. The teacher recruitment recovery and retention task force was, statutorily created.
And if there's something along that line Right. We can absolutely do that. Just to throw out, Southeastern is still running the energized program where we are training and certifying computer science teachers unless you had ignite. Can't get the word out of my mouth, ignite. And so, you know, use use the universities. There's a lot of talent here in Louisiana, and so use us. I would just say I would add, one piece just going on this this this this, idea of establishing a a successful community.
What where we're starting to see numbers that and the numbers that I like right now are jobs that are are that students are able to achieve Mhmm. AI literacy related programs. The one that I'm most impressed with right now is the California AI workforce accelerator acceleration board, which, governor Newsom in California put together, with California State University. And what that did, it was a a fairly simple process. Simple. But he is that Newsom's office established an MOU that, brought together state agencies to
back this board and the board for work for AI workforce acceleration. That then they brought in a lot of different tech companies. Anyone who is interested in getting a AI AI workforce kind of going in their in their organization. I was specifically speaking to someone from Adobe. Adobe alone took on 2,000 interns through this process, and they created a micro that so, got rid of some of them entering the MOUs with all these different companies and gave them a little bit of something.
Adobe got $25 an hour per intern hour. Mhmm. That led to real outcomes, which was Adobe then committed training to level up students, that committed an internship program, which led to jobs. Mhmm. And so it it's a it's a great process, and I I haven't suggested looking at it. The the California AI workforce acceleration for Great. Thank you. They they just put in pretty much everything. Thank you. Yeah. I wanna chime in this too. My my notes here are the same as senator O'Bella. So you mentioned the workforce education council.
And in my reference to Matt, his team was some sort of bar chart. So Exactly. Some sort of visual diction. Right? So we understand roles and responsibilities and the connectivity between each role. So, again, I I just wanna jump in that bandwagon. Thank you. Trey is not here for about the liberal six. I'll be I'll be reaching out to him and and have a conversation. I will tell you related to that, we were not successful in our massive, grant application. That's okay because they've already the group the the principles associated with that have already reconnected to talk about how do we take this work and find a way forward
with I think that there was quality application, quality work. There was one program in Louisiana funded, Lafayette, and and congratulations to them. That's great. We'll try to get a, an overview of that to give to you so you could see how that work what that work is and how it fits in, in the bigger picture. But but positioning is for for federal and private funding. It'll be essential because the state is not gonna be able to fund all of this. And if there's other resources that are out there, then we should be very competitive in getting it. I think all all this work that that those first five deliverables are gonna position
us to be quite competitive in that space. At least that should be part of our our priority, I believe. I thank you for the back of the chairs and all the committee members that work on that. We'll, get the February date on your calendar ASAP. That'll be a great meeting to try to finalize some of this and then prepare a report to Vesey, that I think is gonna be quite subject. President, will you have some closing remarks? No. Just again, just appreciate, everyone's, commitment to this effort. This will be a lot of value, going into the next legislative session because I'm
I'm sure it's gonna be a hot topic. So so really, I appreciate, representative Schlagle, your your presence here and and, with how well you're absorbing all this and take it back to your colleagues. But, really appreciate everyone's time, your commitment, and, looking forward to that, monthly board. Just a second. I'll post again. Do you have a second motion to adjourn? Seven minutes. Thank you very much. I'm a great week.