How one school district in New York turned AI skeptics into curriculum champions

Pearl River School District in New York has developed a comprehensive AI integration strategy through a collaborative committee of teachers, parents, administrators, instructional coaches, and students. The district’s proactive approach has resulted in positive student response, with guidelines emphasizing exploration rather than restriction of AI tools in education.

What you should know: The district formed an AI committee in 2023 to create guidelines and determine appropriate AI tools for educational use.

• Technology Director Jamie Haug, drawing on 20 years of education experience, recognized AI’s significance early and moved beyond resistance to embrace integration.
• The committee includes five students as of this year, ensuring student perspectives shape AI policies.
• Guidelines will be published this summer and start with “students will explore,” acknowledging that AI will be part of students’ lifelong toolkit.

Key student insights: A district survey revealed widespread AI adoption among students, with positive attitudes toward the technology.

• Half of students were already using AI for schoolwork, and 40% for social media purposes.
• Students found AI engaging and helpful, preferring it as a research tool.
• Three-quarters of the student body expressed needing deeper knowledge of proper AI usage.

How it works: The district partnered with SchoolAI, an educational technology platform, to implement AI across grade levels and subjects during the 2023-24 school year.

• Third-grade students used chatbots to interact with fairytales, reporting it felt “more real” than having stories read aloud.
• High school math classes utilized the platform as a personalized tutor for AP calculus.
• Haug emphasized finding tools that work across age groups: “You don’t often find tools that do both of those.”

Curriculum-first approach: Haug prioritized AI tools that align with educational standards and curriculum requirements.

• SchoolAI’s standards-aligned features helped convince skeptical teachers of AI’s potential benefits.
• Key advantages include personalized student help available 24/7 and translation capabilities for English learners.
• New York’s strict data privacy regulations help protect student personal information while enabling these benefits.

Addressing challenges: The district is developing systems to handle cheating concerns and outdated institutional standards.

• Haug is working with the superintendent to create a rubric placing assignments on a zero-to-five scale, where zero means no AI use and five means explicit AI exploration.
• Some teachers have begun creating assignments that incorporate AI tools.
• Long-term institutional changes are needed to align standards with evolving technology: “It’s hard to make that kind of drastic change when, at the end of the day, you’re still determining success and your standards still align to a much more outdated system.”