Rancho Santa Fe School District developing new policy on AI use for staff

The Rancho Santa Fe School District is tackling the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, reviewing a new policy on AI for staff use.

The board had a first read of the new policy at its Aug. 12 meeting and will approve the final version next month. As AI is constantly evolving, the district’s Director of Technology and Cybersecurity Jamil Soltani said the policy represents a preliminary approach to staff use that they will likely need to revisit multiple times.

A policy on student use of AI, “a much different beast,” is still months down the line.

As Soltani explained, AI is essentially pattern recognition with machine learning and problem solving: “It’s not all-knowing or infallible, it doesn’t think or understand like a human, it’s not unbiased…It especially isn’t going to be replacing any jobs or educators.”

The board policy allows teachers to use AI as an effective support tool but establishes clear safeguards. The district most wants to avoid staff sharing personally identifiable information with AI platforms to protect student privacy—no student names, addresses or indirect identifiers should be used.

Per the policy, the superintendent will establish a list of authorized AI platforms for employee use. The district will review each platform for privacy protection, data security and bias to ensure it meets Rancho Santa Fe’s safety standards. To start, the district will use Google Gemini as the district language.

Staff training is included in the policy to ensure that employees understand the expectations and requirements of using AI to do their jobs.

“Staff can currently use anything because we don’t have those bumpers in place,” Superintendent Kim Pinkerton said. “We recognize that staff is using AI, everyone’s using it, so how do we put guidelines in place to protect student privacy, staff privacy and community privacy.”

Like with any new technology, Pinkerton said: “It’s just an opportunity to teach people how to use a tool.”

The district is continuing to work on the AI policy for students and Soltani presented a possible 12-16 month timeline that would include the evaluation of platforms and a pilot process. For now, use of AI is categorically blocked on the students’ school-issued iPads.

“It’s a pretty valuable tool, especially for students,” Soltani said. “We’ve just got to find the right tools.”

R. Roger Rowe School’s elementary and middle school principals Lindsey Conley and Joe Erpelding said AI is currently avoided in the classrooms. Conley said the English language arts department works around it by not letting kids write at home to keep them from using AI.  Erpelding said the math department does not use AI at all as the whole point of cognitively guided instruction is for the students to cognitively struggle with math and not just ask AI for the answer.

At the meeting, the board had a lengthy discussion about AI and its merits—some of the board members regularly use it for work or personal use, some not at all. Board President Jee Manghani believed the policy was crucial and needed, but he wished the student piece could be completed sooner as kids are already using tools like ChatGPT for writing or to find out the answers to questions.

Board Vice President Kerry Vinci said he has never used an AI platform directly and doesn’t like how it takes humans out of the picture. For him, the first thing that comes to mind is the movie “The Terminator,” the 1990s classic about AI becoming self-aware and causing a worldwide nuclear event.

He agreed with Manghani that the timeline should be shortened on the student side: “I’m less concerned about the teachers’ and administration’s use of it than I am the students,” Vinci said. “I think we need to learn how to control it and monitor it and only allow what is appropriate.”