Indian Hill details AI, cybersecurity and screen-time plans; district to brief families this fall

Dr. Melissa Stewart, superintendent of Indian Hill Exempted Village School District, and Mark Richardson, the district’s director of innovation and technology, laid out the district’s technology plan and data-security measures during the May 19 board meeting.

Stewart said the district has revised its AI policy to align with a recent state template and is treating misuse of AI under the district’s academic-integrity rules. "This year the state actually put in place a law that all schools need to have a policy," Stewart said, describing a stoplight system at the high school that flags assignments where AI use is permitted or prohibited.

Richardson previewed planned summer work and near-term investments: completion of interactive classroom display installations, the arrival of 720 new Chromebooks and a new data warehouse to support teachers. He said the district was able to save $133,000 on device purchases because of timing and procurement flexibility.

On classroom technology use and screen time, Richardson shared district monitoring results for the prior three months: primary school device use averaged about 4% of the school day (roughly 17 minutes), the elementary school averaged about 57 minutes per day, and middle and high school figures were about 19% of the instructional day (roughly a little over an hour). Richardson pointed to examples of high-impact instruction — fourth graders’ endangered-animal research websites and programmable Sphero robots used in middle- and high-school math and coding classes — to show how devices were used intentionally.

District officials described several tools used to protect students and data. Richardson said the district uses filtering and classroom monitoring tools (Securely and GoGuardian) and a new software product to track licensing and data-privacy agreements. He also said the district encrypts data on all district devices and requires multi-factor authentication for staff accounts. The district contracts a cybersecurity vendor (identified in the meeting as Expel) to perform monthly dark-web scans.

Stewart and Richardson said the district will summarize these measures in a communication to families and host an in-person community technology session in late September or early October to explain how AI is being taught, how tools are used at school, and how parents can manage devices at home. "We'd like to hold an in-person technology training moment for the community this September," Richardson said.

The presentation prompted questions about the reasons schools are targeted and how the district identifies and responds to compromises. Richardson said the district’s incident-response plan follows the NIST federal standards and that the district performs annual cybersecurity assessments in partnership with its vendor and insurance carrier.

What’s next: the district will finalize goals for AI instruction by grade level, continue professional learning for teachers over the summer, and circulate a family-facing summary of technology and security practices before the new school year.