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Superintendent urges district to treat AI as a tool, not a prohibition, in K‑12 classrooms
Summary
Superintendent Tice briefed the Board on takeaways from an education‑technology summit and recommended a transformational approach to artificial intelligence that emphasizes student skills and a mentor mindset rather than outright bans or slow, transactional rules.
FAYETTEVILLE — Superintendent Tice told the Fayetteville‑Manlius Board Wednesday that the district must move beyond prohibition and narrow regulation of artificial intelligence and should instead pursue a measured, instructional approach that teaches students to use AI responsibly.
Tice, returning from an education‑technology summit, said policy responses should avoid two common errors: preserving the status quo or adopting transactional rules that try to police student use beyond the district’s authority. “What CHAT GPT cannot do is that interconnectedness, that human element,” he said, arguing that machine tools must be paired with human mentorship and higher‑order instructional design.
Tice described three policy options he heard at the summit: status quo (ban or ignore AI), transactional (restrict and regulate), and transformational (redesign instruction to incorporate AI’s strengths). He said the transformational approach — analogous to the calculator’s historical effect on math instruction — would let teachers redesign tasks so AI supports diagnostic feedback, personalization, and iterative practice rather than simply producing student work.
District staff and teachers, Tice said, are already experimenting: some classrooms use AI for data analysis in science classes while humanities teachers focus on academic‑honesty and craft. Curriculum staff are drafting digital‑literacy work and code‑of‑conduct language that would treat AI as an academic‑honesty issue with a teacher‑level spectrum of permitted use.
Board members raised concerns about pace and equity. One trustee noted that FM’s usual deliberative process could leave the district “a thousand steps behind” given how rapidly AI is changing. Tice and other presenters said the district will continue piloting tools, update professional learning cycles, and craft classroom‑level guidance that can be color‑coded by teachers (green to red) to indicate permitted uses on specific assignments.
There was no Board vote at the meeting. Presenters said next steps include further work on digital‑literacy coursework, assistant‑principal and library‑media collaboration, and the development of clearer classroom guidance and college‑level escalation procedures for suspected misuse.
