Moreno Valley Unified previews AI rollout, task force outlines guiding principles and classroom safeguards

Moreno Valley Unified School District hosted an interactive artificial intelligence workshop during a special board study session on the evening of the meeting, where an outside facilitator and district staff outlined guiding principles, acceptable‑use proposals and a phased rollout plan for classroom AI.

The workshop, led by facilitator Adam Gary with Strategic EDU and introduced by district staff, explained how generative AI works, demonstrated classroom activities and highlighted risks including voice cloning, deepfakes, hallucinated (fabricated) citations, and algorithmic bias. Gary and district members said the task force — made up of classified, certificated and administrative staff — is preparing guiding principles, acceptable‑use language for staff and students, and an implementation plan that includes professional development for all employees.

Staff told the board that the task force recommends a phased rollout rather than opening tools district‑wide immediately. Speakers discussed starting with ninth through 12th grade as a controlled pilot, using teacher‑controlled systems (for example, notebook LLMs that restrict training data) for younger students, and requiring parental permission where appropriate. Staff stressed that tools differ: some models store memory and personalize responses when a user is logged in, while others require explicit activation.

Board members asked about enforcement and safety. Staff said they will update the district’s acceptable‑use policies and ask vendors for transparency about the underlying model in products the district evaluates. They also discussed equity questions — for example, how classroom lessons would proceed if some students lack parental permission to access AI — and pledged to produce a formal plan to share with cabinet and the board in the coming months.

The presentation included interactive table activities so board members and staff could compare outputs from different AI tools and see how prompts, model selection and creativity settings change results. Gary emphasized prompt engineering practices for educators and recommended that teachers be trained first through curiosity‑driven activities rather than immediate lesson‑planning.

Next steps announced to the board included finalizing guiding principles, drafting acceptable‑use policies for students and staff, building an AI literacy curriculum, and preparing district‑level professional development. The task force will consolidate group work and present a proposed timeline and materials to cabinet before bringing policy recommendations to a future board meeting.