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Hillsborough schools outline AI safeguards, approved classroom tools and family resources
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Summary
District technology leaders described privacy safeguards (FERPA/COPPA compliance and data‑ownership agreements), listed approved AI tools (SchoolAI, NotebookLM, Gemini with educational licensing) and pointed families to a new online AI hub with guides and simulations.
Assistant Superintendent Joel Handler said the district requires any platform used with students to be FERPA and COPPA compliant and to sign data‑privacy agreements that keep student data under district control. "All that data is owned by the district," Handler said, adding that the district will not allow vendors to use student inputs to train external models.
Dan Gallagher, the district's supervisor of instructional technology, described a newly added AI hub on the district website with family guides, suggested conversation prompts and links to curated resources. "We then added a new button for our AI hub," Gallagher said, noting the page hosts quality‑sourced media, simulations and playlists to help families learn with students at home.
Gallagher listed three district‑approved AI platforms and their grade access: SchoolAI (K–12), NotebookLM (7–12) and Gemini (9–12). He said those services are covered by the district's educational licensing so input data are protected and not reused to train external models. "This is different from what you might have as a personal account," Gallagher said of the licensed Gemini instance.
On the district's expected practices, Gallagher said teachers should require students to acknowledge when and how AI was used and follow posted guidelines that describe ethical and unethical uses. Handler and Gallagher repeatedly urged the community to treat AI outputs as starting points, not final products, and to verify results before relying on them.
The district also emphasized that free public AI tools can treat user inputs as training data and instructed staff and families not to put personally identifiable information (PII) into such services. Handler said the district has joined the Student Data Privacy Consortium to strengthen its vendor agreements and data protections.
Next steps: the district said it will post the session to its YouTube channel and continue updating the AI hub with resources. The district encouraged parents to consult the posted AI usage framework and to contact school tech coaches for help.
