{"id":23382,"date":"2026-04-30T18:14:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T18:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/23382\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T18:14:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T18:14:14","slug":"artificial-intelligence-integration-rises-in-flagler-county-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/23382\/","title":{"rendered":"Artificial Intelligence Integration Rises In Flagler County Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HAL<\/a>HAL settles in for the long haul in Flagler schools.<\/p>\n

In Flagler County schools, artificial intelligence is the new Google. All but 2 percent of faculty and staff use it at some point, almost half of them daily.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Students from grades 6 and up\u2019s use of AI at teachers\u2019 direction is at 71 percent, either in classrooms or independently, through such tools as MagicSchool, Khanmigo, Canva and the student version of Gemini.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very limited, student-focused tools,\u201d the district\u2019s Theresa Phillips, a digital classroom specialist, said. \u201cIt\u2019s not like wide open, any type of AI use. It\u2019s done in a very responsible way, paying attention, obviously, to safety and security.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s driven a lot by our teachers being more comfortable and understanding with it,\u201d IT Director Ryan Diesing said, as teachers have been better trained in using the tools, \u201cand then what rails and things can be put up to make sure that our elementary students have some exposure and understanding of what it is.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Diesing, in an AI discussion with the School Board at a Tuesday workshop, likened the current AI learning curve to the early days of Google and Yahoo and Netscape, when adults and students were learning the ropes of the internet, a word that was capitalized back then. \u201cYou see a lot of parallels to this,\u201d Diesing said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cThe joke today still is, oh, it\u2019s on the internet. It must be true. It\u2019s in AI, it must be true. So I think those are a parallel thing to keep in mind. And where I keep going with this is, I was on the younger side of that, and now I\u2019m on the older side looking at it.\u201d But with the same open-minded approach. In the early days of the internet, there were impulses to think: \u201cCan\u2019t deal with this. We\u2019re just going to block it all.\u201d The district didn\u2019t go that route, Diesing said. \u201cWhat did we do? We worked through it from an education standpoint. It became a very, very valuable tool.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s been with AI, from the district\u2019s standpoint.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Teachers have been getting more comfortable with AI\u2013and more suspicious of it: the proportion of teachers who don\u2019t think students should be exposed to AI has more than doubled in 2026, to over 13 percent. The district\u2019s survey does not ask why, though Board member Janie Ruddy, who is on the AI committee for the Florida School Board Association, says it could be a combination of factors\u2013mistrust of tech companies owning personal data and excessive screen time among them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be appropriate for us to have some town halls with parents,\u201d Ruddy said, \u201cbecause we would need to help educate them along this journey and inform them on what is AI in the classroom, which may be different from at home.\u201d Ruddy also wants more purposeful clarity on the district\u2019s philosophy in using AI, to what specific ends\u2013operational efficiency? Academic achievement? Data analysis, with student identities removed? \u201cIs that something we\u2019re willing to go to?\u201d Ruddy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The more teachers who like AI are getting trained on it, the more they are using it with students, especially as they learn to interact with NotebookLM.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

NotebookLM is Google\u2019s online research and note-taking tool focused on the specific document the user uploads. It is document-specific AI. It does not draw on the entirety of the internet to analyze and spit out results about a document, thus reducing the tendency of AI tools to \u201challucinate\u201d\u2013the actual term for a serious and common problem with AI tools, which routinely fabricate information. \u201cIt controls the source,\u201d Superintendent LaShakia Moore said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI have mixed emotions,\u201d Board Chair Christy Chong said. \u201cAI, you can use it for big things, and we\u2019re kind of at the place. It\u2019s like, we can\u2019t fall behind in technology. But you also want to make sure that we add the human aspect. And like you said, it can be wrong at times. I use it in healthcare now, and I have to make sure that what it says, that it heard me correctly. Sometimes it\u2019s wrong.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Teachers use the tools to create lesson plans, to find study resources, to create quizzes or flash cards or study guides.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While parents may request that their child be opted out of AI use, all students at all levels have access to MagicSchool, but teachers have to open that access first. Students in grades 6-12 have access to Brisk Teaching, Khanmigo and Gemini, and high school students have tools built into their individual, school-issued Macbooks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The district has a so-called \u201cLightspeed\u201d product built into its AI systems that immediately alerts human staffers if a student inputs something of concern in an AI chatbox.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve done a lot with AI literacy for both teachers and students at the same time,\u201d Phillips said. \u201cIt\u2019s more than just how to use it. It\u2019s really like understanding what AI is and how it works, and then also how to use it, and then, really importantly, how to evaluate output. That\u2019s an important skill. Actually, our students are probably better than our teachers in looking at images and material and being able to tell you if it was AI-generated or not. They tend to get tricked a lot less than our teachers necessarily do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which implies that teachers may not yet be generally trained enough to detect AI-generated essays. But teachers also have tools that analyze how their students put their work together. The tools are intended to minimize cheating. They do not eliminate cheating, especially by more clever students.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AI training at Phillips\u2019s administrative level and among faculty has been intensive, through conferences, state-level training sessions. \u201cThis year, so far, we\u2019ve had 2,275 hours of professional learning targeted towards AI,\u201d Phillips said. (There are around 800 teachers in the district.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

The district is also mindful of student privacy. The data that students and faculty generate stays \u201cin house,\u201d so that the AI tools don\u2019t use it to train its machines. \u201cWe essentially have our own enterprise ChatGPT licensing,\u201d Diesing said.\u00a0 \u201cSo anything entered into that, if you\u2019re using Flagler schools, is still separated from the larger element.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The IT department is developing an AI guidebook applicable to all things AI in the district. But school board members had questions about the method of evaluating AI\u2019s impact in the schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ruddy, who is clearly and by far the most AI-literate member of the board, is interested in more rigorous ways of measuring educators\u2019 and students\u2019 AI literacy. \u201cI could say I\u2019m awesome at AI, but if I\u2019m only asking it recipes\u2013I have got ketchup and noodles in my pantry, what can you make for me?\u2013is that really AI literacy?\u201d she asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The workshop discussion was not intended to introduce a new policy or direction, but to update the board on the state of AI in Flagler schools today, though the board\u2019s existing AI policy will be updated soon. \u201cIt\u2019s important that you as a board continue to have this conversation,\u201d Moore told the board.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

2026 Flagler AI in Education Update (2)
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