Sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free daily newsletter to keep up with Indianapolis Public Schools, Marion County’s township districts, and statewide education news.
Indianapolis Public Schools is considering a policy on artificial intelligence that would guide the district as it experiments with AI tools for teachers and staff.
The policy — which the school board could vote on later this month — follows a yearlong pilot program in which 20 staff members used a district-approved AI tool to better understand its uses and challenges. Although the policy does not address specific acceptable student uses, it lists general guiding points for staff to ensure AI tools are appropriately used for teaching and learning.
“There’s still a lot to learn from a broader group of adult users before we’re putting students in an environment that maybe doesn’t match curriculum or what teachers are learning at the same time,” Ashley Cowger, the district’s chief systems officer, said. “We want to make sure that staff feel well equipped to determine what the boundaries are for use of AI in a classroom.”
The basic guidelines are one step into a complex AI landscape that IPS and other districts now navigate. While districts could use tools such as the chatbots ChatGPT and Google Gemini to cut down on time-consuming, administrative tasks, they must also balance concerns over online student privacy and inherent bias in the manmade tools.
Plus, IPS will launch a second phase of its pilot AI program this upcoming school year in which even more staff will use a generative AI tool — the chatbot Google Gemini. However, the district is not yet adopting a districtwide tool for staff.
“We are focused on playing the long game so that we’re not finding ourselves in a situation where we’re procuring a bunch of different systems and then those systems don’t meet our needs in a year or two,” Cowger told the school board in May.
The district did not respond to questions from Chalkbeat Indiana about the second phase of the pilot program and future rules for student use of AI tools by deadline.
AI could support lesson plans, create reports
The draft policy states that AI must be used to produce equitable outcomes while also adhering to applicable federal laws such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which mandates the privacy of student records.
Staff must only use AI tools approved by the district, which would license the appropriate AI products, according to the draft policy. An “AI Advisory Committee” of administrators, teachers, and technology and legal experts would also provide input on the districtwide use of AI.
It’s unclear when the advisory committee would be created.
Acceptable uses of AI listed in the draft policy include using it to:
- Draft communications such as emails and newsletters
- Create data summaries or reports
- Support lesson planning
- Automate “repetitive, low-risk tasks”
The acceptable uses were shaped by this past school year’s pilot, which concluded that using AI helps staff do more complex analytical tasks with less human brainpower and capacity, Cowger told the board.
“It also allowed us to simplify administrative tasks,” she said. “Our schools send out newsletters every week. We also do district communication regularly. We have tools like a generative AI tool that can help us at least craft a first draft that doesn’t require 100% of human brainpower all the time.”
The first phase of the pilot included teachers, administrators, and central office staff.
Google Gemini will cost $177 per user in the second phase of the pilot program for 2025-26, Cowger said. The second, broader phase could help the district figure out how far it would like to stretch its use of AI going into the 2026-27 school year.
Cowger said the district’s “responsible use agreements” for district-issued technology, such as laptops, will also need to be updated to “encompass the world of AI.”
And although the district negotiated a cheaper cost per user for Gemini in the second phase of the pilot, Cowger said officials will have to think about the future potential cost if AI use grows districtwide.
Using free versions of AI tools comes with the risk of sharing sensitive student information — such as a student’s personalized education plan — on the internet, Cowger said.
The district has also outlined a “roadmap” for professional learning for staff that will be used in the upcoming school year.
“From hearing feedback from the pilot group over the course of this year we heard a lot of what people want to know. People want to know how the tools actually work. They understand it’s not magic, but they also don’t need to know all of the science behind it,” Cowger said. “Something in the middle that they need to understand.”
Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.
