I've Started My District's AI Journey, Now What?

Presented by Krestin Bahr, Kris HagelConference SessionFor AASA AI Super Summit

I've Started My District's AI Journey, Now What? A Roadmap for the Next Phase

This presentation, delivered at the AASA AI Super Summit on November 18, 2025, by Peninsula School District leaders, offers critical lessons learned and a forward-looking roadmap for districts that have already begun their AI implementation.

Key Takeaways:

  • Foundation of Innovation: The district's journey is grounded in its strategic plan's goal of innovation, providing the latitude to explore new frontiers like AI, even if some initiatives (like the Metaverse) don't pan out.
  • Teacher-Driven, Iterative Process: The district's AI work was driven from the ground up by teachers, starting with ELA and expanding. A key lesson learned was the need to involve principals earlier and more deeply in the process.
  • Public Sharing is Crucial: The district maintains a public website, psd401.ai, to share everything from guidance and policies to implementation stories, approved tools, and a catalog of real-world use cases.
  • Continuous Learning and Refocusing: The journey requires constant evaluation. The district identified three key groups for focused professional development:
    1. Clerical Staff: Huge productivity gains were seen with targeted training.
    2. Principals: Recognized as a group needing more focused training on AI's instructional and personal practice applications.
    3. Students: Acknowledged as learning about AI from informal sources (TikTok, Discord, Reddit) and possessing more knowledge than adults often assume.
  • Set Clear Expectations: The district is establishing explicit expectations for the 2025-2026 school year: student AI use is not considered cheating, and all staff are expected to find ways to use AI in their work.
  • Buying an AI Tool Isn't a Silver Bullet: A critical "hot take" is that purchasing a tool alone is not a comprehensive AI strategy. The tools must align with the district's core instructional beliefs and either advance the work or help staff grow, not just sidestep important cognitive tasks.
  • PSD AI Studio: Building Custom Solutions: To address the gap between generic AI tools and district-specific needs, the district developed its own open-source AI platform. This allows them to build custom assistants that align with their instructional philosophy, such as an observation assistant for principals that codes evidence and suggests coaching conversations rather than writing the evaluation.
  • Embrace Discomfort and Ambiguity: The second "hot take" is that the pace of change required is immense, and comfort with ambiguity is now a critical leadership skill. Waiting for certainty means falling further behind.

Actionable Insights for District Leaders:

  • Go Beyond Purchasing a Tool: Critically evaluate how any AI tool aligns with your district's instructional framework and values. Does it enhance thinking or merely reduce it?
  • Engage All Stakeholder Groups: Don't overlook the professional development needs of clerical staff and principals. Actively listen to students to understand their real-world AI usage and concerns.
  • Establish Clear, Proactive Guidelines: Move from a reactive to a proactive stance. Explicitly state that AI is a tool for learning and set expectations for its use by all staff.
  • Consider Building, Not Just Buying: For core instructional or operational processes, explore creating custom AI assistants that are deeply contextualized with your district's frameworks, rubrics, and beliefs. The PSD AI Studio is offered as an open-source model.
  • Lead Through Ambiguity: Acknowledge that you won't have all the answers. The most important step is to keep moving, learning, and adapting. The greatest disservice is inaction.
  • Share Your Work: Contribute to the collective learning of the education community by sharing your district's AI journey, including both successes and failures.

Looking Ahead:

This presentation is a candid reflection on the realities of a district's AI journey after the initial "start-up" phase. It's a call for deeper, more intentional integration that aligns AI tools with core educational values. The development of the PSD AI Studio signals a move towards creating bespoke, context-aware AI that can truly enhance, rather than replace, the critical work of educators. The message is clear: the AI journey is not a destination but a continuous process of learning, evaluating, and evolving.