Valley schools enter new year with AI guidelines | News

Many school districts in the Valley will begin this upcoming school year with new guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence tools in the classroom.

In the Danville Area School District, Assistant Superintendent Heaven Reinard said it’s important for administrators and teachers to get the introduction of AI right.

“It would be a disservice to our students if we didn’t take this seriously, and if we didn’t come up with a plan that we know is going to work for our kids, and work for our teachers,” Reinard said. “As administrators, that’s all we care about is making sure that our students and our teachers are supported. AI is here to stay. It’s in our communities. It’s in our universities, our colleges. Jobs are using it right now, and our job is to prepare kids to have a good life.

“We know that if we don’t take this seriously and we don’t prepare them in a way that’s going to support their critical thinking, we’re doing them a disservice.”

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association’s 2026 State of Education report indicated that slightly more than half (55.9 percent) of respondents stated that students in their districts are utilizing generative AI as part of district-approved curriculums, programs or activities. Roughly 80 percent of school districts reported providing their staff and students training on the use of generative AI, but only 70 percent of districts reported having a policy, procedure or other documentation outlining the appropriate use of generative AI by students.

Reinard and Jeffrey Ryan, the director of information technology, said Danville has a five-phase plan to implement artificial intelligence tools over 24 months. A steering committee was established last year with administrators, teachers and students and met dozens of times to develop an ethical AI framework and build a foundation before opening up to students this year.

“AI is really enhancing equity within our district, but we’re making sure that AI is not taking the place of learning,” Reinard said. “It’s used as a tool. We’re establishing equity, bias, transparency and basically what the use of AI will look like within our district.”

During the past year, the district provided professional development for high school teachers. The goal was to ensure all teachers felt comfortable using AI as a tool in their classrooms and using it ethically, they said.

“The whole premise is that we created guidelines and guardrails for any of the AI used within the school district,” Ryan said. “We didn’t want to leave anything to chance. We just didn’t want to open AI to students without having a really solid plan on how it would be utilized, and having the ways it could be used and all the guidelines and guardrails set up. It wasn’t set up haphazardly within the district without some real thought.”

As a Google-integrated district, Ryan and Reinard said teachers will train students at the high school at the beginning of the 2026-27 school year. Each classroom and teacher has a leveling system for how much AI is permitted in any subject or classroom: zero level means no AI at all, and level three is skill development where students learn how to manipulate, critique and understand the tool.

“It’s going to be centered around ensuring that they have the tools necessary to be successful,” Reinard said. “This is not replacing instruction, but using this as a tool to enhance their instruction and use this as a tool to really make sure that we are still teaching our students to think critically. That’s the biggest part for us at Danville is that we are using this not in place of critical thinking. We’re simply using this as a tool to enhance our students’ critical thinking.”

The goal is not to ignore the technological advances, but to expose students to it in a controlled manner, Ryan said.

“We don’t want to get rid of the critical thinking skills, but we don’t want to bury our heads in the sand and say that AI isn’t going to exist in this world because it is,” Ryan said. “Just having that opportunity with certain assignments where it’s applicable, where AI can create different learning situations, where it can challenge students in different ways and can help the learning process. That’s where we’re concentrating in our process and what really made us see some innovative ways that we can utilize AI within the classroom.”

‘Compromising academic integrity’

Midd-West Superintendent Joe Stroup, Dr. Dane Aucker, the director of curriculum and instruction, and high school Principal Mandi Romig said the district’s policy allows for students to use AI tools, but they cannot use the tools to pass off work that is not their own. The policy was put in place in January 2026 for the last half of the 2025-26 school year, but the district was practicing the tenets prior to the official policy.

“When you’re passing your work off as your own original work, but AI generated the work, you’re compromising your academic integrity,” Aucker said.

For example, students cannot use AI to generate a full essay on any topic. They can use it to quiz themselves, gather references and narrow down sources, Romig said.

“AI is known for hallucinating, so it also makes up answers and passes them off as fact,” Aucker said. “Even though AI gave you that reference, students must have the knowledge and skill set to go back in and find that text and reference, to see if that’s actually a true research point from that particular source.”

Students have been using AI, so they are already embracing it. The district’s goal is to guide students to use the tools in a “proper way” that is mindful and doesn’t allow for shortcuts, district officials said.

The policy will remain unchanged for the upcoming 2026-27 school year, Stroup said.

“There’s nothing that I would do differently based upon policy, and I think we need to continue to let it play out and see how things go,” Stroup said. “Overall, I think our students handle things maturely and responsibly. Same way with any type of technology, there is a little piece of adjustment, like with cellphones, but then it kind of regulates itself.”

‘Part of our world now’

Shikellamy Area Superintendent Jeremy Winn and Assistant Superintendent Trevor Palmatier said the district’s policy was formed following a multi-day AI conference with the Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit in Milton earlier this year. The district’s policy was approved in July and will be implemented for this new school year. Teachers use Brisk for education, and the policy outlines how students can use AI programs in the classroom.

“We want our students to be proficient using AI because it’s obviously part of our world now,” Palmatier said. “But we want them to have the tools and the knowledge to use it appropriately.”

Palmatier said the administration consulted high school students about their opinions. The feedback was “pretty mixed,” he said.

“Everyone agrees that it’s part of our world now, not going away,” Palmatier said. “We just need to figure out how to use it correctly and to our benefit, and have students be able to differentiate between what’s real and what is not when using AI or seeing images or seeing materials. That’s also part of this process as well as educating our students on AI.”

Not since the rise of the internet decades ago has there been such a significant emerging technology like AI, they said.

“We don’t know ultimately where AI is going to end up,” Palmatier said. “We’ve always had the challenge of education of not really knowing what the jobs are going to look like, and I think that’s even more so now. We’re preparing students for jobs that most likely don’t even exist yet, so it’s really going to change what we’re preparing students for and the skills they need.”

‘A tool that’s out there’

Lewisburg Area Superintendent Vincent Hoover and high school Assistant Principal Johnathan Sliski said the district introduced AI guidelines at the beginning of the 2025-26 school year. The policy, which outlines appropriate usage, ethics, integrity and rules against submitting AI-generated work, has been well received by students and has had few violations.

“We have a large population of students who take pride in doing their own work and want to represent themselves well, and they want to put their character on display. They practice integrity when it comes to tools they use online as well,” Sliski said. “A lot of our students understand that the consequences of academic integrity issues far outweigh any gains in efficiency.”

The district partners with MagicSchool Enterprise and Google Gemini, Hoover said.

“It’s a big topic right now and how they’re utilized, and we want to just provide them with guidance on our stance on using it, so that they’re not just figuring it out on their own,” Hoover said. “This is a tool that’s out there. We know students are using it in their personal lives. We know their parents may be as well. We’ve got to let them know about our approach to this. We’re treating it as a tool.”

Andrew Rantz, the director of secondary education for the Milton Area School District, said the district continues to use software programs that assist in detecting AI-submitted assignments in sixth through 12th grades. Teachers have the flexibility if and when they want to allow students to use AI for assignments.

“In many situations, we are moving back to paper and pencil exams and writing assignments as a way to combat the use of AI,” Rantz said.