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Bellevue board hears AI-in-education report and questions on bias, data and discipline
Summary
District technology leaders demonstrated classroom AI tools (Magic School, Colleague AI), described an AI literacy pilot and said AI could free teacher time and offer equitable feedback; board members raised concerns about algorithmic bias, student data privacy, discipline policy and costs.
Bellevue School District technology leaders presented an introductory report on artificial intelligence in K–12 instruction at the Jan. 21 board meeting and demonstrated classroom-facing tools the district is piloting.
Tom Dunwall and Keith Anstead, who lead district educational-technology efforts, showed examples from Magic School and a research-partner chatbot called Colleague AI (a project developed in partnership with the University of Washington). They said the district’s vision is to “use AI as a tool to intensify the human element in education,” allowing teachers to spend more time in direct interaction with students while offering equitable, personalized coaching and feedback.
Demonstrations included educator-facing scaffolds for generating decodable early-literacy texts, tools that assist lesson planning and a student-facing set of activities intended to offer writing feedback and debate practice. Presenters said the platforms emphasize reviewing and revising AI outputs and that the district is piloting an AI literacy curriculum to teach students how AI works, its benefits and risks such as bias and misinformation.
Board members asked detailed questions. Director Monica Webster asked the presenters to describe plans for algorithm monitoring and disciplinary responses to misuse, especially where automated processes could intersect with protected classes. Webster and other directors cited the risk that AI systems amplify bias because they reflect the data they were trained on and noted the additional risk that AI-generated content could be recycled into training datasets.
Directors also asked about the cost of tools in light of the district’s budget-shortfall planning, the environmental energy use of AI services and the board’s role in reviewing vendor partnerships and student-data protections. Several members emphasized that AI can be an accessibility and equity tool — for example, by providing personalized supports to students with disabilities or English learners — while cautioning that policies will be needed so accessibility benefits do not become a pretext for punitive discipline.
The administration said it selected partners, including the University of Washington, in part for their equity-focused research and that the district is collecting pilot data and usage statistics; no procurement decisions or districtwide rollouts were approved at the meeting.
Ending: The board requested additional information about costs, data governance and a proposed set of “do’s and don’ts” for classroom AI use; staff agreed to return with more detail and suggested the board keep AI on its regular agenda as the technology evolves.
