Caroline County Public Schools to pilot Magic School AI; district outlines teacher controls and training plan
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Summary
District staff and vendor Magic School presented an enterprise AI partnership emphasizing teacher‑controlled settings, moderation dashboards and professional development; the board pressed for rollout details, data oversight and scheduled train‑the‑trainer sessions.
Caroline County Public Schools and vendor Magic School presented a plan to deploy an education‑focused AI platform designed to support teachers and align with district priorities.
At the March 18 board meeting, Mr. Robinson introduced Kara Keller, Magic School’s Virginia partnerships manager, who said the product layers an educational scaffold over large language models — OpenAI, Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude — to provide lesson‑planning tools, rubric generation, multilingual supports and IEP‑related aids. “We want to ensure every educator feels comfortable leveraging AI so they can model safe and effective use for students,” Keller said.
Keller described a middle “educational” layer that enforces content filtering, and an evaluation platform that monitors prompts and outputs for bias, hallucinations and accuracy. She said the platform includes teacher‑controlled moderation, messaging limits and oversight dashboards so the division can limit access and review usage.
Superintendent Dr. Sarah Calverick and board members pressed for operational details. Calverick asked for examples of the roughly 80 educator tools available; Keller listed instructional material creation, question‑generation, rubric creation, IEP meeting simulators and student engagement tools. Keller said Magic School supports an “80/20” approach: use AI for the bulk of drafting while teachers apply professional judgment to the final product.
Board members asked about rollout and professional learning. Keller and district staff described a train‑the‑trainer model, with in‑person and virtual professional development options, and said the district will decide which tools to enable initially. “We do have a meeting next week to hash out PD options,” a district staff member said, and staff will follow up with dates and opportunities for board members to attend.
Keller said about 30% of CCPS teachers already used free Magic School accounts, and that 95% of user‑survey respondents reported improved quality of life. The district noted it currently has no enterprise subscription but uses Gemini via the Google suite and that individual teacher accounts may vary.
Next steps: the district will schedule PD dates (including train‑the‑trainer sessions and options at the summer retreat), finalize which tools will be available initially, and provide additional data and timelines to the board before wider student access is considered.
