Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Ai Policy topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Springfield schools showcase AI demo and send student, staff AI use guidance to full committee
Summary
Superintendent Robert St. Laurent and staff demonstrated Microsoft Copilot classroom uses, described a year-long AI task force and recommended student and staff guidance that emphasizes AI literacy, privacy protections and a software-vetting rubric; the subcommittees voted to recommend the guidance to the full school committee and tabled related retention changes for further review.
Superintendent Robert St. Laurent and district staff demonstrated a teacher-focused artificial-intelligence use case and asked school committee subcommittees March 18 to endorse draft guidance for student and staff use of generative AI.
The demonstration, led by Cody Minihan of the district’s digital learning team, used Microsoft Copilot to convert an OpenSciEd lesson into a one-page homework PDF and to summarize the district’s draft AI guidance for a busy teacher. Minihan emphasized enterprise data protections on the recommended tool and stressed that generated outputs require human evaluation. “This does not fit on one page. Please regenerate with proper formatting,” Minihan said during the live iteration to show how teachers would review and refine outputs.
Why it matters: The district proposes adding a focused AI appendix to the existing student acceptable-use policy rather than creating a standalone rule. Staff said guidance will stress AI literacy, equity, academic integrity and privacy protections so that tools support — and do not supplant — critical thinking.
What the task force did: St. Laurent told the subcommittees the task force met in five working sessions, held teacher listening sessions and consulted a student advisory council. He said the group developed district AI principles and a draft of usable guidance that staff and teachers can apply in class. “If you put in a quality prompt, you get out quality information,” St. Laurent said when discussing the importance of prompt design and teacher training.
Key provisions and guardrails: The draft guidance recommends vetting and approving specific AI tools before classroom use, identifying entry-level use cases accompanied by professional development, prohibiting use cases that would violate academic integrity or expose personally identifiable information (PII), and committing to periodic review of the guidance as technology evolves. Staff also flagged concerns about autonomous AI agents and told the subcommittees that any agentic or automated functions would be reviewed by the district’s IT and information-accountability teams.
Partnerships and pilots: Staff described existing pilots (an attendance-related IDEA pilot) and partnerships with academic institutions including UMass Lowell and UMass Amherst to help shape training and a software-vetting rubric. The district also launched a digital-learning fellows stipend program to create exemplar lessons and build PD resources.
Concerns raised: Committee members pressed staff on equity and pace of implementation, potential union impacts, AI-detection tools for academic integrity, and safeguards for student data. Parents’ and students’ use of AI outside school and how to include families in training were also discussed.
Vote and next steps: The technology and legislative-and-contract subcommittees voted to recommend the student- and staff-guidance appendix to the full school committee for adoption; the district will return with a software-vetting rubric, further PD plans and an implementation timeline. Staff said they will revisit the guidance routinely and publish an approved list of tools after vetting.
