Pearl River School District in New York has developed a comprehensive AI integration strategy through a collaborative committee of teachers, parents, administrators, instructional coaches, and students. The district’s proactive approach has resulted in positive student response, with guidelines emphasizing exploration rather than restriction of AI tools in education.
What you should know: The district formed an AI committee in 2023 to create guidelines and determine appropriate AI tools for educational use.
- Technology Director Jamie Haug, drawing on 20 years of education experience, recognized AI’s significance early and moved beyond resistance to embrace integration.
- The committee includes five students as of this year, ensuring student perspectives shape AI policies.
- Guidelines will be published this summer and start with “students will explore,” acknowledging that AI will be part of students’ lifelong toolkit.
Key student insights: A district survey revealed widespread AI adoption among students, with positive attitudes toward the technology.
- Half of students were already using AI for schoolwork, and 40% for social media purposes.
- Students found AI engaging and helpful, preferring it as a research tool.
- Three-quarters of the student body expressed needing deeper knowledge of proper AI usage.
How it works: The district partnered with SchoolAI, an educational technology platform, to implement AI across grade levels and subjects during the 2023-24 school year.
- Third-grade students used chatbots to interact with fairytales, reporting it felt “more real” than having stories read aloud.
- High school math classes utilized the platform as a personalized tutor for AP calculus.
- Haug emphasized finding tools that work across age groups: “You don’t often find tools that do both of those.”
Curriculum-first approach: Haug prioritized AI tools that align with educational standards and curriculum requirements.
- SchoolAI’s standards-aligned features helped convince skeptical teachers of AI’s potential benefits.
- Key advantages include personalized student help available 24/7 and translation capabilities for English learners.
- New York’s strict data privacy regulations help protect student personal information while enabling these benefits.
Addressing challenges: The district is developing systems to handle cheating concerns and outdated institutional standards.
- Haug is working with the superintendent to create a rubric placing assignments on a zero-to-five scale, where zero means no AI use and five means explicit AI exploration.
- Some teachers have begun creating assignments that incorporate AI tools.
- Long-term institutional changes are needed to align standards with evolving technology: “It’s hard to make that kind of drastic change when, at the end of the day, you’re still determining success and your standards still align to a much more outdated system.”
Recent Stories
DOE fusion roadmap targets 2030s commercial deployment as AI drives $9B investment
The Department of Energy has released a new roadmap targeting commercial-scale fusion power deployment by the mid-2030s, though the plan lacks specific funding commitments and relies on scientific breakthroughs that have eluded researchers for decades. The strategy emphasizes public-private partnerships and positions AI as both a research tool and motivation for developing fusion energy to meet data centers' growing electricity demands. The big picture: The DOE's roadmap aims to "deliver the public infrastructure that supports the fusion private sector scale up in the 2030s," but acknowledges it cannot commit to specific funding levels and remains subject to Congressional appropriations. Why...
Oct 17, 2025Tying it all together: Credo’s purple cables power the $4B AI data center boom
Credo, a Silicon Valley semiconductor company specializing in data center cables and chips, has seen its stock price more than double this year to $143.61, following a 245% surge in 2024. The company's signature purple cables, which cost between $300-$500 each, have become essential infrastructure for AI data centers, positioning Credo to capitalize on the trillion-dollar AI infrastructure expansion as hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Elon Musk's xAI rapidly build out massive computing facilities. What you should know: Credo's active electrical cables (AECs) are becoming indispensable for connecting the massive GPU clusters required for AI training and inference. The company...
Oct 17, 2025Vatican launches Latin American AI network for human development
The Vatican hosted a two-day conference bringing together 50 global experts to explore how artificial intelligence can advance peace, social justice, and human development. The event launched the Latin American AI Network for Integral Human Development and established principles for ethical AI governance that prioritize human dignity over technological advancement. What you should know: The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, the Vatican's research body for social issues, organized the "Digital Rerum Novarum" conference on October 16-17, combining academic research with practical AI applications. Participants included leading experts from MIT, Microsoft, Columbia University, the UN, and major European institutions. The conference...