Leominster schools detail SchoolAI rollout, stress teacher oversight and student privacy

Leominster Public Schools officials described an ongoing rollout of an AI learning platform and defended safeguards on student data and classroom use.

At the School Committee meeting, Stephanie Petito, Leominster’s digital learning administrator, said the district adopted the SchoolAI platform after teacher pilots and rolled it out to middle- and high-school staff between December and May. "In Leominster, we adopted, School AI after having some teachers pilot sort of these 2 programs," Petito said. She said the district plans an elementary rollout in May or June and is gathering formal and informal feedback from teachers and students.

Petito said the platform differs from public chat services because teachers can view and manage every conversation a student has with the tool. She described automated safety flags and a teacher dashboard: the system can terminate a chat if it detects self-harm content and sends an alert to the teacher; teachers can pause or insert text into a conversation and can upload rubrics so the platform’s feedback aligns with a teacher’s grading standards. "Teachers have access to all this data on SchoolAI, so they can see every single conversation that a child has had with these chatbots," she said.

Petito gave usage numbers from the district’s rollout: roughly 1,300 students have used SchoolAI this school year, about 300 teachers have logged in and roughly 20 use it regularly. She said special education staff were early adopters and that the platform has tutors and co‑teacher tools intended to provide individualized support and feedback for struggling and advanced learners alike.

Committee members raised questions about where the platform draws information, how the district controls knowledge bases, and whether a district knowledge base should be built to ensure consistent answers. Petito described SchoolAI as a ChatGPT and Gemini wrapper with filtering and stated that data entered in the platform is not reused to train external models: "This data is not used to make anything smarter. It just kinda dies where it dies," she said.

Petito also said Leominster is part of DESE’s district leadership in the age of AI cohort and has consulted state and national guidance, including DESE materials, ISTE and UNESCO frameworks and an Evergreen Group competency framework, as it crafts local guidelines for classroom use. She said the state task force is expected to publish guidance quickly: "They're looking at, like, a month because AI... is evolving rapidly," she told the committee.

The presentation closed with committee members urging a districtwide knowledge base and targeted use cases (grading, tutoring, lesson plan generation) rather than broad blanket bans. The committee asked staff to report back with updates; members suggested monthly or near‑term briefings as the district refines policy and practice.

The district did not request committee action at the meeting; the rollout described by staff is an administrative implementation with continuing review.

Looking ahead, Petito said the district will continue teacher training, collect feedback from pilot classrooms, and coordinate with state guidance as it finalizes local classroom rules and transparency requirements.