← Aaron Magnan, Ed.D.

Draft

Using AI at Our School: A Guide for Staff

AI tools are already in our classrooms, in our inboxes, on our students' devices, and in their homes. Much of it is invisible: it's built into search, games, photo apps, and the videos our students watch, whether anyone chose it or not. Our students are young, and what's fine for a high schooler may not be right for a second grader, so the question is never just whether a tool works but whether it fits the child in front of you. This guide tells you how to use AI here without putting a student's information or a student's work at risk. It follows the district's draft board policy on artificial intelligence in instruction and our existing acceptable use rules. The policy sets the rules. This guide explains how to follow them day to day.

If anything here seems to conflict with the policy, follow the policy. If a situation isn't covered, ask before you try it.

One way to think about it

It helps to picture AI learning as a ladder with seven rungs, from knowing AI exists up through experimenting, analyzing, understanding, collaborating, contributing, and creating. Nobody climbs the whole ladder in elementary school, and nobody should. Our students spend most of their time on the first three rungs, with short visits to the others, and that's where the Common Sense Media lessons we already teach do their work.

• TK through 1st grade: Knowing. Students learn that some of the voices, pictures, and answers on a screen come from a machine, that a machine doesn't think or have feelings, and that it can be wrong. Most of this happens in conversation, not on a device. When AI is used at all, you're using it, with the class watching.
• 2nd and 3rd grade: Knowing, and beginning to experiment. Students may try an approved tool with you beside them, as a whole class or small group, to see what it does. The Common Sense lessons on altered photos and where information comes from fit here. The questions to grow are "how did it know that?" and "is that true?"
• 4th through 6th grade: Experimenting and analyzing. Students may use an approved tool themselves on assignments you've designed for it, with you nearby. The point is judgment: checking an answer against a source, spotting where the tool guessed, and explaining what they did versus what the tool did.

The upper rungs show up in elementary school too, but at a basic level. A fourth grader using Canva's AI to make an image for a poster is creating with AI. A class dictating a story to Copilot and fixing what it gets wrong is collaborating with it. Both are fine, and this is part of why the approved list matters. When the tool is district-approved, students can go further up the ladder without you worrying about where their words and pictures end up. In middle school and beyond, students spend more time on the upper rungs and go deeper. In elementary school, they get an introduction.

Which tools you can use

The district keeps a list of approved AI tools in the teacher portal and the principal portal. Check it before you use a tool for school work, and check it again before you let students use one. The list will grow as new tools are reviewed.

Right now the list includes:

• Microsoft Copilot. This is the district's general-purpose AI tool. It's part of our Microsoft suite and runs inside your district login, so what you type stays within district systems. For most staff tasks, start here.
• Canva. Approved for design and video, including its built-in AI features.
• MagicSchool. Approved for lesson planning and classroom materials.

If a tool isn't on the list, it isn't approved, even if it's free, even if another district uses it, and even if a student brought it in. To request a tool, submit a Zendesk ticket to ESSC. Reviews take time, so ask early.

Before students use an AI tool

Ask four questions about any tool before students touch it:

1. Is it on the district's approved list? If not, stop here. No exceptions for student use.
2. Does it keep or share student information outside district systems?
3. Does the student need their own account with an outside company?
4. Can people outside the district see what students type or what the tool produces?

Our annual technology agreement covers tools the district runs inside its own systems. If the answer to question 2, 3, or 4 is yes, send the district's additional consent form home before students use it. If all three are no, the annual agreement covers you.

Protecting student information

Students never enter personal information into an AI tool. Not their name, not a classmate's name, not an address, phone number, or anything else that identifies a real person. Teach this the way you teach not sharing a password.

For staff, the rule has two parts:

• Student data goes only into approved tools that have a data privacy agreement with the district. Copilot inside your district login qualifies. A personal account on any AI tool does not, ever.
• Even in an approved tool, leave identifiers out when you can. "A third grader reading two years below grade level" gets you the same help as the student's name, and it protects the student.

Personal information includes a name, address, email, phone number, student ID, and anything else that could identify a specific person. If you're unsure whether something counts, treat it as if it does.

AI and student work

You decide whether students may use AI on an assignment, and you write that decision on the assignment. "No AI on this one" and "You may use Copilot to brainstorm, but the writing has to be yours" are both clear. If you say nothing, students will make their own rules.

Work a student turns in as their own has to be their own. AI-generated writing or answers submitted as original work is plagiarism under our existing technology policy and is handled the same way, unless you permitted that use. When you do permit it, tell students how to show what the tool did and what they did.

Three things never to do

• Never use AI to make or change a picture, voice, or video of a real person. That includes students, staff, families, and cartoon versions of them. The only exception is an assignment you designed and approved.
• Never put student information into a personal AI account, a free tool, or anything not on the approved list.
• Never let a student use an AI tool that hasn't been approved, even to show them something.

Everything in our acceptable use rules about harmful, threatening, or harassing content applies to AI the same way it applies to everything else. Students are held to these same rules, and you are the one who teaches them.

What you can do today

If no student information is involved, you can use Copilot right now for your own work. Some places to start:

• Draft a family newsletter or a note home, then make it your own.
• Rewrite a reading passage at two or three levels for a small group.
• Turn a long district document into a one-page summary before a meeting.
• Build a set of practice questions from a lesson you already teach.
• Plan a unit outline and then fill in what you know works with your kids.

Read everything it produces before you use it. These tools are confident and sometimes wrong, and your name is on what goes home.

Who to ask

• Questions about whether a tool is approved, or to request one: submit a Zendesk ticket to ESSC.
• Questions about using AI on an assignment or with a particular group of students: your principal.
• Questions about student information or a possible data mistake: your principal first, the same day. Mistakes get smaller when they're reported early.

This guide will be updated as the approved list changes and as the district's AI policy is adopted.