Spartanburg District 1 pilots MagicSchool.ai for teachers; board discusses funding, policy and privacy

Spartanburg School District 1 officials on the board meeting agenda presented results from an ongoing pilot of MagicSchool.ai aimed at saving teacher planning time and building AI literacy among staff. Dr. Jimmy Pryor, the district's AI integration facilitator, told trustees the district recorded roughly 15,000 "generations" (teacher requests to the platform) in recent weeks and that about 403 teachers have used the system so far, out of roughly 500 certified teachers in the district. Pryor said the pilot is funded by a one-year state innovation grant that is about halfway complete and that the University of South Carolina will evaluate whether teachers are saving the 3— hours per week the district seeks to document.

Teachers presented specific classroom examples to the board. "Reyna acts as a thought partner," third-grade teacher Tori Murph said, describing how the assistant provides differentiated lesson steps, vocabulary and practice activities that can be produced in seconds. "It helps me design instruction quickly, especially for struggling learners," Murph said. Seventh-grade teacher Joey Millwood said the platform has cut his workload and offered creative options for lesson planning, but added that teachers remain central to interpreting and applying AI-generated material: "AI won't ever replace that. It clears the way." Both teachers emphasized that, in the current phase, students are not using the AI tools; the pilot is focused on teacher-facing workflow.

District staff explained why the district chose MagicSchool.ai and how the platform is configured for schools. Pryor described MagicSchool as a wrapper that connects multiple large models (he named ChatGPT and other frontier models) inside an education-specific shell; district staff said the configuration is designed to keep district data local rather than feed raw student records to public large language models. Technical staff confirmed that certain analytics and single sign-on connectors are in place to isolate student data inside the district's instance.

Board members pressed for budget clarity and sustainability. Pryor and others said MagicSchool was procured with prior state innovation grant dollars and that remaining grant funds will cover some near-term costs. The district reported MagicSchool costs as "about $6 per student," and stated that translates to roughly $36,000 annually for the district based on the enrollment figure mentioned in the meeting; the precise headcount used in that calculation was not clarified during the session. Trustees discussed stipends for lead teachers who will be "boots on the ground," staff FTE funding for the facilitator role, and the possibility of using fund balance or setting aside a three-year reserve to avoid interrupting the work if grant funds lapse.

Trustees and outside speakers recommended a careful, staged approach to student use and policy. Pryor outlined a three-phase plan: phase 1 (teacher tools and literacy), phase 2 (designing rules and student-facing pilots with Clemson University's help), and phase 3 (broader implementation and individualized learning pathways). Multiple trustees asked for a follow-up work session to review policy options, privacy protections and potential budget allocations; the board agreed to schedule a work session for a deeper review.

The district also flagged evaluation and external partnerships: the University of South Carolina will evaluate outcomes, and the district has begun outreach to Clemson and other community partners to pursue additional grant funding and implementation guidance. The meeting closed the AI discussion with agreement on continued inquiry, a planned work session, and further budget analysis.

Next steps: the board directed staff to prepare budget detail and to schedule a work session to address policy, privacy and funding scenarios before any student-facing rollout.