BI schools selected for Microsoft AI-integration grant

Published 1:30 am Thursday, February 26, 2026

The extent to which artificial intelligence tools will shape education is still undefined, but the Bainbridge Island School District could be a pilot for a new frontier.

BISD is participating in a cutting-edge think tank program from Microsoft that aims to help Washington school districts integrate AI into the structure of their services — a step beyond the digital tools’ use in classrooms by students and teachers that could shape the way the district manages its finances, curriculum and information systems.

“A lot of energy in the education system, so far with AI, is focused on how students are using it or not using it, and how teachers are using tools to instruct, but there hasn’t been a real similar effort on how it’s actually changing how we do business as an organization,” said Lesha Engels, district career and technical education director. “So that’s the foundation of what this grant is about.”

The program includes a $75,000 grant and access to a “Community of Practice” with fellow school districts, tech experts and consultants — a 15-month collaborative summit, during which each district will plan out an AI-based pilot program for use at their schools. A few select schools will be chosen to develop their programs for launch in March 2027.

BISD is one of 20 school districts in the state selected for grant funding, which is part of Microsoft’s $4 billion “Elevate Washington” initiative and the Gates Foundation’s ongoing investments into AI for student achievement. In an effort to encourage the use of AI tools by professionals and students alike, the tech company has pledged free access to Microsoft’s Copilot and Teams for Education for all high school and community college students in Washington for three years.

“This is more than a program — it’s a promise to Washington’s 100,000 educators and 500,000 high school and community college students. A promise that they will be equipped with the very best technology to navigate — and help shape — this new era,” wrote Brad Smith, Microsoft’s Washington vice chair and president, in an Oct. 9 program announcement from the company.

While BISD has only just begun brainstorming — the Community of Practice kicked off in February— the possibilities for AI use made leadership “giddy,” said Engels.

“It is coming fast and furious, and we really want to use it to help our systems in our schools, but also, we know our students are using it, so we want to make sure that we can support them through that process as well,” Engels said.

BISD director of technology Kiyo Toma noted that transitioning to AI from traditional methods of information sharing does come with some caveats. The field of vendors is evolving quickly, he explained, and while human input is still necessary for quality control or content generation by most AI tools, leaning on the tools after decades of analog educational methods could take some getting used to.

“Step one, when we’re talking about creating anything AI-related to impart information to other people, you actually have to codify the information. And a lot of times, in most traditional institutions, that is just one person: the knowledge, and the pen [and paper], right?” said Toma. “So, there’s actually a positive aspect of a group of people coming together to bring their best thoughts and experiences, and try to quantify that [in AI].”

Data privacy, ensuring equitable access to AI tools and keeping parents informed of the technology’s rollout at BISD will be “forefront” as the district gets closer to its project goal, said director of teaching and learning Whitney Skarbeck. Health and data security experts at the National Institute of Health and the Sideby AI have warned that without guardrails, student data absorbed by AI can be misused, and inappropriate attachments to the chatbots can result in mental health issues.

“We know that with AI, all this is coming faster than we can keep up with, and there are new tools coming out all the time. The things that weren’t available two months ago are available today, and in two months, they’ll be totally different and far improved,” said Skarbeck. “There is, of course, that cultural shift. We all know that change is really hard, and this is the shift that we need to make of how we’re doing business, because our goal is to make sure that our students are ready for the next step in their lives, and that we are supporting them through that process.”

School board president Evan Saint Clair cautioned the team against a wholly rosy view of AI tools in school settings. When automation becomes ubiquitous, skill atrophy can occur, he noted, which can be devastating for developing minds — particularly when those minds are both still learning how to master the task at hand, and how to use the tool that automates it.

“I think we have to, as we are creating these projects, be very cognizant of how we are teaching our children how to interpret them and deal with AI, and say, ‘This is fake. This is not created by humans. This is a distillation of human creations,’” said Saint Clair. “As a whole, as our district, we have really good hearts in the right place, we’re gonna do our best to make sure that the material that we present to them is good, and builds their capacity, but we’re not the only ones feeding them AI-generated materials. So if we don’t also give them a shield as strong as the armor that we’re hoping will prop them up, then … it’s easy to fake a video, it’s easy to fake audio. We just have to protect ourselves, because it’s here, no longer a simulation.”