The Iowa City Community School District told the board on Sept. 9 that it has deployed districtwide responsible-use guidelines for artificial intelligence, introduced grade-level lessons for K'12, convened an AI-champion teacher cohort and purchased ChatGPT EDU licenses for select operational and staff-use pilots.

Andrew Fencenmaker, who presented the update at the board meeting, described the multi-year rollout. The district first updated board policy in 2023 to require evaluation of AI tools and to direct age-appropriate student training; it then drafted responsible-use guidance and classroom curriculum for K'5, 62 and 9
2 last year and iterated the materials for the current school year. "We have revised the K'5 lessons to be standalone lessons for kindergarten, standalone lessons for first grade," Fencenmaker said, adding that 62 and 9
2 lessons are being integrated into social-studies instruction.

Fencenmaker cited national survey data and local pilot feedback showing teachers use AI for tasks such as preparing materials, generating feedback, adapting lessons and analyzing patterns in student work. He said roughly six in 10 teachers in a Gallup dataset use some form of AI in their work and the district's early-adopter teachers likewise reported time savings on administrative and instructional tasks.

District investments and pilots described in the presentation included:
- 200 ChatGPT EDU licenses purchased for staff/operations (the district said those licenses are for staff use, not for general student access under the current plan);
- An "AI champion" cohort of teachers that completed professional learning; the district reported paying roughly $4,100 for 40 licenses for last year's cohort and said the current cohort will have a higher license cost this year (stated figure $5,100, which includes a $1,000 partnership fee for SchoolAI); and
- A planned AI summit in partnership with Digital Promise to convene districts in the region and showcase student prototypes using generative AI.

Fencenmaker described sample classroom activities: kindergarten students train a simple image classifier with Teachable Machine to learn how data informs a model; elementary lessons emphasize the human-in-the-loop principle and ask students to evaluate AI output using a locally adapted rubric; secondary lessons focus on the learning process and preserving productive struggle rather than outsourcing the learning to AI.

Board members asked how teachers balance AI use in classes so students do not forfeit deep engagement with complex texts. Fencenmaker and Superintendent Degner said teachers retain professional discretion to restrict AI for particular assignments and to lead discussions that make acceptable and unacceptable uses explicit. "If we offload the learning process to AI, it's robbing us of that academic task," Fencenmaker said as an example of classroom guidance.

District staff also reported efforts to pilot AI for operational tasks, including training a ChatGPT EDU instance to help staff check Canvas course pages for accessibility and suggest embed code changes to meet web-content accessibility guidelines.

Why this matters: the district is seeking to balance academic integrity and student learning goals with operational efficiencies. The phased approach'policy updates, classroom curriculum, teacher champions and selective staff pilots'is designed to build staff capacity and to provide teachers with examples and guardrails.

The board did not take formal action on the AI update. District staff said they will continue to scale the training, reconvene the AI task force and develop a formal AI strategic plan.