ORLANDO, Fla. — The use of artificial intelligence in schools has become a big topic of conversation across the country and locally as well.
Orange County Public Schools continued discussions about proposed policies for AI use throughout the district during a workshop Tuesday, as officials hope to have an approved policy ready before the 2026-2027 school year.
In the meantime, the district has been listening to its families and teachers.
The Popov family wants to ensure that their two sons have all the tools they need to be successful in all of their endeavors.
That includes preparing them for the advancements in technology.
“We do have to make our children literate in the AI technology in order for them to be successful in entering the workplace environment because it’s going to demand it at some level,” explained Jessica Popov.
Popov is a mom of two OCPS students and shares that she knows the importance of AI and its use as it continues to pick up steam in our everyday lives.
And while she wants her kids to know how to use it, she doesn’t want them to rely on it.
“I don’t want my children to be utilizing AI in order to solve their math problems but never fundamentally learning how to solve the math problem,” Popov shared. “I don’t want my children to never learn how to write, yet they can put some bullet points into AI and create a paper.”
That’s the balance that OCPS is trying to find, and admittedly, there are still a lot of concerns the board wants to address.
“The goal is to figure out how do we solve for why students are using AI, right? Is it that they need help; do they need support or not getting what they need? Or why are teachers using AI,” said OCPS Board Vice-Chair Maria Salamanca. “Obviously, we know they’re overworked, they have a lot of busy work and there’s a lot of things there. And so, we’re trying to go deeper into the why that it’s happening.”
Salamanca says they’ve received feedback from hundreds of students and teachers about the issue across the district and various town halls they hosted.
The policy, as it stands now, only allows district-approved AI platforms, requires staff and students to use their own words and double-check for accuracy, and does not allow the creation of false images or “deep fakes”.
These are the main points that make school board members feel that they’re going in the right direction. But they do know that this is a forever-changing topic.
“This is something that the school board will definitely come back to probably once a year to say the least,” Salamanca said.
Popov says she appreciates the board’s work and diligence but is not convinced the policy will be ready before the next school year, which is just three months away.
“I don’t think it’s a policy that’s ready to go for the upcoming school year, and it creates so much more tension around an already tumultuous topic,” Popov said.
The board announced that it plans to have a final vote on the policy by the end of the school year in order to have it ready for the upcoming school year.