The Bainbridge Island School District has begun reviewing its policies around student use of electronics to reflect the growing prevalence of artificial intelligence and new cybersecurity risks.

Recommendations from the Washington State School Directors’ Association, a statewide group that establishes best practices for school leaders, have added “appropriate use of [AI]” to the profile of successful student mastery of technology and media.

“This policy articulates a school district’s commitment to using electronic resources as a means to further our education mission, while also recognizing that school districts must consider internet safety for students and provide educational resources that teach healthy digital citizenship toward youth,” said district technology director Kiyo Toma.

As a relatively nascent field, the role of AI in school settings is still evolving, Toma explained, and the district will likely have to revisit its policies annually as the technology changes. Without legislative guidance from the state, it’s up to individual school districts to decide how to regulate the use of AI — and to leaders to play catch-up themselves, at the same time.

“There is no hard and fast guidance coming from either the state or the federal Department of Education, [but] there’s a recognition that this is likely a major part of our future. How that impacts pedagogy, frankly, in my opinion, there is no playbook. What’s happening are general principles,” said Toma. “There are some very good frameworks of how school districts may think about doing this, but it is a complicated conversation… We have to be willing to help ourselves understand what this means, and not wait for the state or the federal government.”

School board president Evan Saint Clair agreed that review of the policy is necessary as the technology develops, but cautioned against a quick adoption.

“What that tells me is that, unfortunately or fortunately, it’s incumbent on you and your advisory team to keep our students’ well-being and success. And that’s kind of hard to quantify in and of itself, but at the forefront, sometimes we have to delay the rollout of technology in order to make sure that our students are healthy and well,” said Saint Clair. “My personal opinion is, we don’t want to be early adopters, but we don’t want to be laggards either, so the sweet spot is making sure we’re making forward progress, and then staying in touch both internally with our highly, incredibly talented staff and students, but also monitor what other school districts are doing.”

Toma plans to bring more detailed policies to the board at further meetings: one regarding digital citizenship and media literacy, and one regarding protection of student personal information. He and district director of teaching and learning, Whitney Skarbeck, also intend to establish an AI Advisory Board in the 2024-25 school year, to support any school board decisions related to the digital tools.

Among the other updates, the new language of the policy also struck a paragraph requiring staff to use their personal and district-issued electronic resources “in a safe, appropriate and responsible manner in keeping with professional codes of conduct, district policies and procedures, and state or federal regulations,” while on district property and during working hours.

School boardmember Jill Anderson noted the loss of the paragraph; Toma explained that the stipulation was redundant to other requirements in the staff handbook.

“Another way to think about this is that the revised [policy] is the first domino of several other documents that we’ll be going through and reviewing and revising where it’s needed,” said Toma.