District Responsibilities

It is irresponsible for a district to not be providing professional development training to educators related to AI, and for those educators to provide guidance, instruction, and opportunities for students to use AI. Educators should think critically about whether there is a way for students to use AI in their class that doesn't breach academic honesty lines. It is not necessary for all courses to use/teach it, but each and every teacher should consider whether there are situations where there is an academic benefit to the use of it in ways that don't .

Oregon laws state that educators must provide sex-education in grades K-12. We provide sex-education for children beginning in elementary, but we don't provide any sort of AI Literacy training? I recognize this is an apples to oranges argument as these topics are not equal. But what I would argue is that both topics need to be explicitly taught in different ways at different levels throughout their K-12 journey. In both cases, if we don't teach our students, they'll eventually learn on their own - with no guiderails or guardrails to protect them.

Below, you'll find the following topics that I think are important for districts to address:

• Policy

• Specialized AI Roles/Jobs

• Training

• Privacy Agreements

Further Reading: 

• K-12 Drive - House Hearing Stresses that AI Training is a must

• The 74 - America Is About to Be Graded on AI Literacy. We Are Not Prepared.

Every district needs AI policies. These need to address:

• Teacher usage of AI

• Student usage of AI

An AI policy tells teachers what is and isn't okay within their district. AI policies will likely fall into 1-of-3 categories

• Discouraged/No use

• At the discretion of the schools/teachers

• Encouraged use

and a district may decide that they're okay with teachers using AI, but not students due to academic dishonesty concerns.

Oregon put out a great worksheet called Developing Policy and Protocols for the use of GenAI in K-12 Classrooms (2025), containing 4 pages on guidance/instruction and a 12 page worksheet to be used with Oregon's "Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in K-12 Classrooms" guidance. Together these provide guidance and instruction for districts to develop their own AI guidance policies that match their already-existing district policies and goals.

Though the document outlines that it's appropriate for schools to have a stance against using AI in schools, I would argue that this is a bad stance for several reasons and all schools should have some allowance for AI usage and training within their schools:

1. AI is the fastest growing technology the world has ever seen. It's not a fad.

2. AI is being embedded into anything and everything, from the appliances in our homes (AI refrigerator) and smart devices we carry (or attach) to us, to the vehicles we drive, stoplights that control traffic flow, and surveillance systems in stores we visit.

Side note: I had a conversation with a traffic control programmer for the City of Salem who admitted to using AI on a few occasions to see if it could generate a better/more efficient program for controlling the city's traffic lights (at that time, it did not).

3. AI literacy is vital for students in this new digital era

4. Many companies report that they won't hire someone who doesn't have experience with AI prompting related to their field.

5. If we don't prepare students for AI use, we should not be surprised when they use it inappropriately and leave our schools ill-prepared for the world ahead.

We should not be preparing students for work in today's world - we should be preparing them for work in a futuristic world. - This is my take on a statement I heard from another AI literacy promoter.

If districts are to provide policies & training, they likely also need someone who specializes in this content. How do you create policies and guidelines or provide training if you don't have 1 or more individuals who are deeply immersed in this content?

It's my recommendation that districts create at least one of the following jobs/roles within their organization to help facilitate training, lead and direct AI implementation strategies, and provide tailored resources/training for students to receive a high quality AI literacy education.

• Director of AI Strategy & Governance

• AI Implementation & Compliance Coordinator

• AI Integration Speacialist

What roles your district takes on depends on the level of responsibility/leadership needed.

Districts are responsible for providing AI training to educators. This includes:

• PII (Personally Identifiable Information), Data Privacy (FERPA, OSIPA), & Data Security Risks- the data about us or our students and how easy it is to unintentionally divulge information about ourselves or students. Divulging student PII to a system that doesn't honor national, state, or district laws/policies on data privacy could result in legal remifications against the school or teacher.

• Issues & Ethical Concerns that could find their way into our classroom, such as:

• Explorations of how to use AI as a teacher:

• Necessity of explicitly identifying when AI is used in teacher resources/lessons.

Districts should have a signed data agreement policy from at least 1 major AI provider that allows teachers and students access to AI that honors not only national data privacy laws, but state laws and district policies as well. 

Schools that do not provide a safe space for AI use paired with age-appropriate training in an era where AI use is flooding society are leaving the rising generation to explore these on their own without supervision, training, or guardrails. They also run the risk of teachers accidentally disclosing student PII with AI organizations. 

AI organizations that don't provide these agreements should be discouraged by districts for the privacy protections of students as well as the legal ramifications that could come from knowingly allowing students to use AI systems that don't honor national or state laws. AI organizations that do provide these agreements get the benefit of students becoming familiar with their products early on which potentially instills trust and loyalty to their brand.