Raytown board approves $12,350 purchase of SchoolAI staff licenses after presentation on generative AI

The Raytown Quality School District Board of Education approved a $12,350 purchase of staff licenses for SchoolAI after a presentation from district staff about how the district would use generative artificial intelligence in classrooms.

District instructional technology coordinator Amanda Cahill told the board staff and students tested two platforms and recommended SchoolAI because it offered a “walled off garden” that would keep district content inside the district: “The main thing about this tool was that it is a walled off garden. So it is just learning about our district and what we put into it, and no 1 outside of us will learn any of that information.”

The recommendation, offered during the board’s Feb. 10 meeting, covers staff licenses for the remainder of the 2024–25 school year and the 2025–26 school year. A motion to purchase the licenses was made and approved; the board chair declared the motion passed after the recorded verbal roll call listed one explicit vote (Board Member Miss Bobby, “Yes”). The motion text on the record was: “Board of Education approved the purchase of staff licenses for the rest of this year and next year from SchoolAI for the price of $12,350.”

Why it matters: District staff framed the purchase as a controlled way to introduce generative AI tools to teachers and, later, to high-school students while training staff in ethical use and in prompting techniques. Presenters emphasized both the pedagogical potential and the limits of the technology — particularly detection of AI-generated student work and the need for human oversight.

District presenters said the planned rollout includes staff training in March and April, followed by parent information meetings at both high schools; the board was asked to approve a student rollout limited to ninth through twelfth grades for the coming school year. According to Cahill, the district’s Vanguard Technology Committee — a 30-member group of pre-K through 12 teachers — tested the platforms and rated SchoolAI 4.03 out of 5 compared with 2.76 for an alternative platform.

Presenters stressed teacher control and supervision. Teachers will have licensed logins and can create teacher-specific “spaces” (comparable to class-specific chatbots) and share those with a given Google Classroom; any student activity in those spaces is saved for teacher review and can be flagged for unsafe content and referred to counselors or administrators. A teacher from a tested class described using the tool to teach ethical prompting and to preserve a record of student prompts and edits for evaluation.

District staff also addressed academic-integrity questions. The board was told there is currently no reliable automated detector for generative-AI-written text and that teachers will continue to use traditional techniques (classroom-level design, teacher judgment and artifact comparisons) and the platform’s compartmentalized set-up to identify inappropriate uses. Cahill said the district will emphasize citation and staff accountability when the tool is used for speeches or other public materials.

Board members asked about scope and support. Cahill said training will start with basic generative-AI background, then move to prompting practices and ethical use. She said the district intends the licenses to support many staff roles — teachers, administrators and secretaries — and to let teachers opt in to using the platform with students when appropriate.

The motion was approved and the board chair declared the purchase passed. The board did not read a full roll-call vote on the record; only one affirmative vote (Miss Bobby) was explicitly recorded during the roll-call prompts.

Looking ahead: District staff said they will deliver staff training in March–April, schedule parent meetings at the two high schools (recorded and posted afterward), and prepare a ninth–twelfth grade rollout for the coming school year.