Roughly 60% of K-12 teachers say they're already using AI -- and most of them are doing it quietly, without clear guidance or explicit expectations.
School districts are responding in every direction at once: partnering directly with AI companies, standing up broad task forces, contracting with education platforms, even building their own in-house tools -- with decidedly mixed results. Some large districts are already swinging back the other way and pulling technology out of classrooms.
And we have real concerns of our own. We're concerned about cognitive offloading -- students handing the thinking itself over to the machine. We're concerned about driving up screen time, and about what constant assistance does to attention. The research is still early, but you don't need a longitudinal study to take these seriously... every educator can see them from the front of the room.
Put those together and the real story isn't a verdict on the technology. It's this: adoption is everywhere, and nobody is steering. Which means "wait and see" and "ban it" are both guesses too.
This is what charter schools were built for
Charter schools are the one part of public education with innovation written into the founding document. The charter isn't just permission to be different... it's a promise to try things deliberately, on behalf of the whole sector. The California Department of Education's model AI policy even says so explicitly -- it invites charter schools to adapt it to their own models.
Schools of choice don't have to wait for guidance. The charter is your permission slip to write your own.
Now is the time to explore and clarify your school's beliefs and expectations for AI use. And you can't do that without everyone on your team knowing what the latest capabilities actually are -- beyond the chatbot -- and having time and space to explore together what meaningful, effective use looks like, aligned with your model, your mission, and your values.
Start with operations, away from students
The instructional question -- what AI should ever do near a student -- is where the offloading risk actually lives, and it deserves a thoughtful, values-first conversation. It should not be answered by default, one quiet workaround at a time.
The operational question doesn't need to wait. Applying AI to school operations -- compliance, reporting, enrollment, the paperwork that crowds out everything else -- offers immediate benefits at low stakes, and gives administrators and teachers time back for the most human parts of their jobs. It's also how your team builds real judgment with these tools... the judgment the instructional conversation is going to need.
Who helps you do it
The AI platforms are genuinely good at what they build, and their guidance will always lead to their product. Ask a vendor how your school should adopt AI, and you'll get a vendor's answer.
As a third party, we don't have a product to win. We read the research, we track the latest capabilities and the low-cost access programs, and we work only on the operations, compliance, and reporting side... not student-facing. Our stake is that your school gets this right, on your terms.