On Board Online • December 15, 2025
By Robin L. Flanigan
Special Correspondent
Michael Sammartano, director of technology at the Pleasantville Union Free School District, was surprised at the response he received after announcing the creation of a new Community Technology Committee. Within days, more than 50 parents expressed interest in serving on the committee, which kicked off in mid-October.
The reason: parents wanted input into how the district can take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI).
"Most parents in their application form referred to their own professional work around AI in any number of professional fields, and how they saw this as a critical element to be brought into the schools," Sammartano said.
Soon, experts say, we can expect to see schools built around AI-assisted instruction.
No, wait - such schools already exist. This year, the New York City Department of Education opened the Middle School of Innovation in Brooklyn, which has plans to focus on AI-enhanced instruction. The goal is to have students "learn to use technology as a tool for innovation while understanding its impact on society and the world," according to the school's website.
In a national online survey by the Center for Democracy & Technology, 85% of teachers and 86% of high school students reported using AI in the prior school year (2024-25), with half of students using AI for school-related reasons.
In August, Ohio became the first state to require every K-12 public school to adopt policies on artificial intelligence by July 1, 2026. Meanwhile, education agencies in at least 28 states and the District of Columbia have issued guidance on the use of artificial intelligence in K-12 schools.
Proponents of generative AI in PK-12 education say it can:
- Foster creativity.
- Create simulations for personalized learning.
- Improve accessibility by assisting students with learning disabilities.
- Create more immersive learning environments.
"If you're studying a particular concept you find difficult, you can use [AI] to help adjust the conceptual framework," noted Joseph Ricca, superintendent of White Plains City School District. For example, a student could say, "Explain this to me in a different way," or "Explain this to me in my native language."
"These types of modifications can go a long way toward helping individualize the learning process," Ricca said.
In New York State, public schools are starting to position themselves at leadership and school governance levels for AI infrastructure rollouts, said Andrea Tejedor, an educational technologist and strategist working with the New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education (NYSCATE).
At a NYSCATE conference held in Verona in late November, EdTech Specialist Kyle Verspoor of Broome-Tioga BOCES described sample lessons used in an AI pilot project involving 10 teachers at Binghamton High School. One called "Two Truths and AI" challenged pairs of students to examine three photos and decide which two were real and which was AI-generated.
Other lessons use the acronym CRAFT developed by North Carolina teacher and technology consultant Vera Cubero to help both teachers and students design effective prompts for chatbots:
- Context - A detailed prompt is better than a vague one.
- Role - Assign the AI a role, e.g. "you are an excellent eighth-grade teacher."
- Audience - Describe who will be affected by the information generated.
- Format – Tell the chatbot to produce an answer of a certain length or character, e.g., a PowerPoint or a rap song.
- Task and Tone - A task instruction tells the chatbot whether you want it to create, edit, revive, evaluate, brainstorm or take some other action, and a tone instruction tells it whether to be critical, kind, collegial, coaching, professional, etc.
Read Verspoor's PowerPoint, called "Not Tomorrow, Today: Real Stories of NY Students Using AI Responsibly" at bit.ly/NYSCATE-25 .
One way that generative AI has been reshaping education involves how students receive, process and present information. For instance, in Monroe County, students in the Rush-Henrietta Central School District are working on a capstone project about local climate change. According to Superintendent Barbara Mullen, students might use artificial intelligence to generate pictures of how local landscapes would appear under different scenarios. Or, they could use AI to generate questions to gauge whether their classmates understand the point of their work.
"In the same way it can help a teacher be very thoughtful about the experience students have, it can help students be very thoughtful about the way they engage with the projects they're designing," said Dr. Mullen, who gives presentations on the adoption and implementation of generative AI nationwide. "It's a very exciting time to be doing this work."
Is someone in your school district already using AI in teaching and learning? Chances are good that the answer is yes; just about every school in New York State - and approximately 100,000 educators statewide - use an AI platform called MagicSchool. It has built-in guardrails to ensure compliance with Education Law Section 2-d and implementing regulations.
MagicSchoolAI was founded in 2023 by Adeel Khan, former high school principal in Denver. He says it is the leading generative AI platform in education, with more than five million users worldwide.
MagicSchool can save a teacher up to 10 hours a week, Khan told On Board.
"Certainly time savings is the hook in," he said. "But, ultimately, the goal is to make meaningful impacts on student outcomes."
For instance, if a teacher attaches a rubric to an AI writing tool, students can get formative, just-in-time feedback that "quite frankly is unlikely to happen" otherwise, explained Khan, who began his career as a special education and English teacher with Teach for America. He has a bachelor's degree in accounting and information systems from Virginia Tech and master's degree in educational leadership and administration from Columbia University.
While AI is not yet entrenched in every classroom, many say that time is coming.
That's why it's a fool's errand to ban students from using AI, said Sammartano of Pleasantville.
Districts should "open up a dialogue about AI to bring it out of this sneaky, in-the-shadows realm where they're trying to pull one over on teachers," he said. Instead, "talk about it as a tool just like you would with any other technology."