Pleasant Valley district leaders used the start-of-year updates to describe two major professional-development initiatives for 2025-26: a daylong generative-AI workshop for teachers and a multi-year rollout of a collaborative coaching model called Amplify Your Impact (AYI).

A staff member who led the professional-development overview said the district brought in Amanda Bickerstaff, an outside consultant, to present a full day on generative AI to secondary and elementary teams. "She was absolutely phenomenal," the staff member said, adding that teachers praised the session and that administrators planned a follow-up survey to identify next steps. The presenter said elementary classrooms will focus on teacher AI literacy with some student lessons later; in grades 7-12, building-level opportunities for AI literacy will be provided to staff and students.

Separately, the district described a multi-year initiative to strengthen collaborative coaching. Administrators and teacher leaders attended training with Michael Maffone, the author and trainer who helped the district create a Strategy Implementation Guide (SIG) for how collaborative teams will operate. A presenter said about 125 administrators and teacher leaders participated in the training and used a SIG built by district staff to define five anchor statements that will guide consistent team collaboration.

Staff emphasized the two efforts are intended to be complementary: AI training is meant to make planning and instructional tasks more efficient and build literacy in teachers and eventually students; AYI is meant to expand coaching beyond one-to-one teacher coaching into a collaborative model to raise collective efficacy.

District leaders said AYI will be rolled out in stages: most staff will learn the principles in the fall, adopt the SIG in January, and volunteer teams will serve as early adopters. The district described the SIG as a "living and breathing" document developed with local voice and context.

No formal board action was taken at the meeting on either program; staff described training outcomes and next steps and said they will return with surveys and rollout updates as the school year proceeds.