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Indian Hill Schools outlines AI policy, cybersecurity steps and family training in technology update
Summary
District technology director reported on classroom displays, a new data warehouse, $133,000 in Chromebook savings, screen-time monitoring, encryption and dark-web scans; school leaders described an AI policy with a classroom 'stoplight' system and pledged a family training session this fall.
Mark Richardson, the district’s director of innovation and technology, gave a broad update on May 19 about classroom technology, cybersecurity and the district’s AI policy.
Richardson said the district will complete an interactive display rollout this summer, is introducing a new data warehouse for teachers and has secured 720 new Chromebooks with a stated savings of $133,000. He described examples of high-impact instructional uses—4th-grade endangered-animal websites and programmable Sphero robots—and reported recent screen-time monitoring results: the primary school averaged about 4% of the instructional day (roughly 17 minutes), elementary about 57 minutes, and middle and high schools about 19% of the day.
On cybersecurity, Richardson told the board the district uses filtering tools (Securly), classroom-monitoring software (GoGuardian), encrypted device storage, two-factor authentication, monthly staff phishing training and annual external assessments. He said the district performs dark-web scans with a contracted partner and maintains an incident-response plan aligned with NIST standards.
Richardson and Superintendent Melissa Stewart described the district’s AI policy as revised and aligned with a recent state requirement. Richardson said the high school uses a per-assignment "stoplight" approach: green assignments where AI use is welcome, red assignments where students’ original thinking is required and uses in between as designated by teachers. "AI cheating is treated the same as any other cheating," Richardson said, and the district is building teacher professional learning to help staff and students use tools ethically.
District leaders said they will summarize the cybersecurity and AI measures in an email to families and plan an in-person technology-training event for late September or early October to explain screen-time management, AI prompting and how the district uses these tools.
Next steps: the technology team will finalize the data-warehouse launch, distribute a family communication summarizing security practices and schedule the fall community training.
