District outlines AI plan: guidelines, pilots and classroom safeguards

District technology and curriculum leaders presented the Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District’s approach to artificial intelligence at the April 7 board meeting, describing guidelines, pilots of teacher- and student-facing tools, and work to develop K–12 instruction and policy.

Director of Technology Brian Miles, curriculum directors Marybeth Plessy and Jan Shonoweth, and Principal Brett Wilfred said the district completed an AI readiness assessment in February 2025 with Advanced Learning Partnerships (ALP) and has drafted seven guiding principles — including student-centered learning, equity, teacher empowerment, ethical use and data privacy — that will direct implementation.

The presenters said the district has formally adopted a teacher-facing tool called Brisk (used inside the district’s Google suite) to support lesson planning, text leveling and translations; they are piloting Claude AI and Microsoft Copilot for staff workflows and are using Google Gemini inside a “walled garden” of district-managed data. Principal Brett Wilfred described a separate pilot of a 24/7 tutoring product being trialed with elementary students; he said that product stores only a child’s first name for functionality and uses scripted decision trees rather than open-generation LLM responses.

Miles and Plessy emphasized student-data protection and said all vendors and tools are vetted for data privacy, security and fiscal sustainability before adoption. "We are prioritizing student data protection," Plessy said, noting the review and vendor-vetting process is consistent whether a product uses AI or not.

Board members pressed staff about plagiarism, academic integrity and policy. Presenters said the district is framing teacher expectations and classroom-level guidance about acceptable AI use rather than issuing a single blanket ban. They described work on a developmentally appropriate scope-and-sequence for AI instruction that could introduce basic concepts in elementary grades and progress to evaluative use in secondary grades; that curriculum planning will involve library media specialists, STEAM teachers and content-area staff.

District leaders also noted operational uses of AI, such as uploading multiple documents into a secure tool to synthesize drafts for staff, and said that embedding of AI into everyday tools (for example, Google Classroom and other platforms) will make quantifying “percent of district use” difficult over time.

Staff outlined next steps: continue piloting tools, finalize curriculum scope-and-sequence, create staff and student one‑pagers, complete ALP-facilitated long-range planning this spring and summer, and develop policy language in consultation with the Department of Public Instruction guidance and other state examples. The presenters said they will return to the board with a more formalized plan and timeline as ALP work is completed.