Tolland schools outline AI guidelines, expand MTSS work and refine K–12 curriculum

Curriculum director Jennifer Webster told the Tolland Board of Education on April 9 that the district is preparing written guidelines and a representative district AI committee to steer how staff and students use artificial intelligence in classrooms.

Webster said district staff currently restrict student access and allow only seven state-approved AI tools to be used by adults because those vendors signed privacy agreements that cover student data. “Some of them require a written prompt to generate material,” Webster said, adding that other tools offer embedded prompts for teachers who are less comfortable writing prompts.

The committee will write “guidelines and guardrails” that Webster said will cover best and ethical practices for teachers and define how the district will respond when students submit AI-generated work. “The committee is gonna define those things as a group,” she said, noting the group will include representatives from multiple grade levels and special education.

District leaders also described continued work on curriculum articulation, assessments and MTSS (multi-tiered systems of support). Mark Rudy, curriculum administrator for STEM, said science instruction is increasingly focused on NGSS-aligned tasks that ask students to interpret data and apply scientific practices rather than only recall content. “Making sure that our assessments…are aligned to the NGSS test,” Rudy said, “is really that thinking- and skills-based approach.”

Kara Hennessy, curriculum administrator for humanities, said the elementary InterReading program (a K–4 adoption this school year) offers many resources but requires significant planning time for teachers. She described work to prioritize which program components to use on a daily schedule and to structure small-group intervention time so teachers can meet varied student needs.

Webster, Rudy and Hennessy said district curriculum teams — described as CIA (curriculum, instruction and assessment) teams — are using backward design to write units aligned to Portrait of a Graduate outcomes and strengthen consistency across grade levels and departments. Webster said the district’s professional learning day in February produced more than 20 teacher-run sessions focused on active learning strategies, MTSS, AI, and integrating ELA and social studies.

On interventions, Webster and Rudy described MTSS as a district priority. They said improving progress-monitoring, making data “live” for teachers and creating regular time for teams to analyze student data are central to improving tiers of support. “Having that data be live for our teachers to know where our students are and what resources we have access to” is essential, Webster said.

The presentation also covered career and technical offerings and the Perkins grant, updates to the Portrait of a Graduate rubrics, and ongoing efforts to build cross-disciplinary connections so students recognize how skills such as argument from evidence apply across subjects.

District leaders answered board questions about plagiarism and detection technology, noting high-school teachers already use Turnitin and other tools that flag rapid typing or revision histories; they said AI use and detection present new challenges but that the forthcoming guidelines will address academic integrity and restorative responses.

The board thanked the presenters and invited further questions at subsequent meetings and instructional rounds.

Ending: Board members did not take any formal action on curriculum items at the meeting; the presentation was informational and staff said they will return with recommended policy language and implementation steps for AI use and MTSS supports.