Charles County Public Schools issues guidance on classroom uses of artificial intelligence

Charles County Public Schools officials on Aug. 12 presented district guidance on artificial intelligence intended to let teachers and students use AI tools while limiting privacy, bias and academic‑integrity risks.

The guidance, developed by a task force led by Charmaine Thompson, chief of instructional technology, and Laura Bennett, executive director of IT strategy, lays out permitted and prohibited uses for staff and students and emphasizes that AI should supplement — not replace — human judgment.

Thompson said the district was given a board charge to study AI and produce guidance because Maryland has not yet issued statewide rules and because tools such as ChatGPT and intelligent tutoring systems are already in use. “This is guidance. It’s not policy,” Thompson told the board. “We do have the opportunity to grow as these tools matriculate and mature.”

Why it matters: The guidance attempts to balance classroom benefits — personalized practice, accessibility supports for multilingual or special‑education students, and time savings on administrative tasks — with clear safeguards against harms officials emphasized in the presentation: student data exposure, biased or misleading outputs and overreliance on automated grading.

What the guidance says: Laura Bennett, who convened the task force, said the document prohibits putting personally identifiable information or internal district documents into public, third‑party generative AI systems unless the vendor has an explicit data‑use agreement with the district. “No use of PII is supposed to be put into any sort of AI that is not controlled by us,” Bennett said. The guidance also states that automated decisions must not replace human judgment — for example, an AI-generated rubric can inform a grade but should not set the final grade without teacher review.

Classroom application and limits: Kevin Lowndes, chief of teaching and learning, described how the guidance will be applied by content area. Elementary classrooms will prioritize foundational skills and limit screen time; grades 4–5 will begin responsible‑use instruction; secondary teachers will get subject‑specific help and professional learning. Lowndes said instructional specialists will speak with teachers during pre‑service week about how to apply the guidance when designing lessons.

Detection and academic integrity: District staff cautioned against overreliance on AI detectors. Bennett and Lowndes said tools that score writing as ‘‘AI generated’’ can misflag clear student writing or writing by non‑native English speakers. The district will ask teachers to use investigative steps — interviewing students about drafts and requesting prewriting documents — before imposing disciplinary outcomes.

Training and rollout: Thompson and Bennett outlined multiple training strands the district has offered since January 2024 — webinars for educators, sessions for parents and support‑staff briefings — and said the guidance will be distributed to teachers, parents and students with further professional learning to follow.

Board and student reaction: Student representatives told the board they see both harms and benefits. The student board member said many peers use AI to shortcut assignments and worried about erosion of critical thinking. Other board members urged the district to pursue tools that reduce teacher administrative burden and to consider an ‘‘emergent technologies’’ policy later if needed; Thompson recommended evolving the guidance first so it can be updated more quickly than a board policy.

Next steps: District staff said the guidance will be finalized, published and paired with training materials and AI literacy benchmarks. They also said they will seek feedback from student leaders and teacher groups as the tools and policy environment change.

Ending: District officials asked the public and educators to treat the guidance as iterative. “We should be leveraging it and learning how to use it and teaching our kids the good and bad of AI,” Thompson said. School leaders plan to start training during pre‑service and to revisit the guidance as state and national standards evolve.