Artificial intelligence is beginning to make its way into nearly every job within a school district. That’s why policies and training about the technology need to be directed at more than just students and teachers.
Creating guiding documents and professional development that’s relevant to so many different jobs within a school district can be a daunting task.
But Tracey Metcalfe Rowley, the senior director of educational technology and online learning for the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona, has taken on that challenge. Rowley has been leading her district’s AI adoption for the past two years. They key to doing that work, she said, is to get input from people in a variety of jobs in the district.
The first thing Rowley did before creating guidelines and a policy addressing AI, she says, was to form a task force of about 40 people, ranging from teachers to people working in human resources and transportation.
That diverse mix of people helped create a policy that now “really informs our staff, our teachers, our parents, our students, about what is responsible and ethical use of AI,” she said.
Rowley outlined important lessons learned about AI policy development in a conversation with Education Week. That conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
A link to her district’s AI policy is here.
Anybody who wanted to be on the task force was allowed on. Why that approach?
It was important to get everybody’s voice to the table. We had people from transportation, from HR, [from] communications, because AI really is impacting everybody. We had a lot of people who worked for the district who were also parents, so they brought that perspective in. We had teachers, we had community members.
Having a lot of voices at the table meant that what we’ve ultimately produced is really good, because a lot of people looked at, and a lot of people commented, and a lot of people added to it.
And they’re all using it too. It’s been amazing how using [AI] correctly and ethically and responsibly has really made a positive difference for so many different departments and our teachers and our principals.
What do you think are the key pieces of a strong AI policy?
I see a lot of policies that are just about students, but you have to also include your teachers, instructional staff, administrative staff, and your district staff.
I would start with: What do you want people to do if they’re going to use it? Let’s tell people how to use it responsibly and ethically. Let’s not come at it with “no, no, no.” Come at it with, “yes, and this is what you should be doing. Yes, we’re going provide professional development. Yes, you can use it, but make sure you’re not putting in personally identifiable information.”
What kind of professional development have you offered and why is that important?
That’s a critical part of the policy. We started with [PD] two years ago that was just, what is AI? Now, we’re in year two of offering professional development training. But we’re not just training teachers. We’re training our staff. I’ve trained the communications department. I trained the HR department. I’ve trained health services. We’re training everybody.
We’ve actually gone now to a place where we are offering differentiated training. We still offer the intro class, the basics: What is [AI]? How do you write a prompt? Those kinds of things.
Now, what we’ve really made a push [for] is infusing AI into what we are doing. With English/language arts teachers, how do you use AI in your classroom? How do you change your writing assignments? How can you use AI if you are a career and technical education teacher?
How do you get buy-in around AI use as well as the AI policy?
The simple fact that it’s here. People are using it. I’m not going to debate whether students or staff should be using it or not. That ship is gone. You can either acknowledge it or not.
But if teachers and district leaders ignore that it’s there, they’re just opening themselves up for trouble in the future, because they’re not giving people guidance or assistance or even guardrails or any information about what’s ethical, what’s responsible. By having a policy and guidelines and then providing that training, we’re showing people, yep, this can help you, but let’s do it the right way.
