These days, we can’t avoid talking about artificial intelligence (AI) in K-12 education. And the wide range of district responses — from outright fear and bans on ChatGPT to rapid-fire attempts to launch these tools in schools — points to just how much we have to learn about this emergent technology.
Most discussions about AI have centered around classrooms and student learning, and understandably so. Amidst concerns like increased opportunities for cheating (despite evidence to the contrary) and the potential negative impacts on social-emotional development, we also hear praise for AI tools saving time and energy for educators.
Alina Tugend describes the challenge well in her report for FutureEd: “In fact, AI, like all technology, is neither inherently good nor bad; what matters is how it’s deployed… Social media, the internet and cell phones all offer cautionary tales about embracing technology without thinking carefully about how to introduce it. The challenge for educators is to use artificial intelligence in ways that tap its unprecedented power to strengthen both teaching and learning while mitigating its liabilities.”
There is another, quieter shift with AI adoption behind the scenes in district and school administrative offices. This technology has the potential to help both teachers and administrators become more efficient and strategic with their limited time and energy.
Let’s explore what hacks AI presents to building leadership and human resources teams and what cautions may be merited.
Hack #1: Create materials faster
The opportunity
Recruiting teams are constantly devising creative ways to market their district, spread the word about open roles, and attract high-quality candidates. With the right prompts and design details provided, AI can generate an impressive range of artifacts, saving recruiters and building leaders time — and perhaps even frustration upfront with the early stages of creative work.
First, AI can assist teams to get their ideas “on digital paper” and develop a first version of marketing materials. In fact, that’s exactly what one recruiter at St. Lucie Public Schools in Florida does.
Mollie Dunn, Coordinator of Recruitment and Retention, takes full advantage of built-in AI tools in Canva and other resources when developing her district’s marketing assets. Whether it’s designing digital advertisements or writing a catchy social media post, as she puts it, “AI is our friend!”
AI can also guide building materials necessary for the hiring and onboarding process, like job descriptions. Candidates searching for positions naturally turn to the job description to see what responsibilities a role entails, but a poorly written or vague one can be enough to turn a viable candidate away.
A recruiter or school principal may use AI to draft the initial version of a job description because this technology can quickly and easily organize information about the role in a sensical way. This approach is especially useful for positions that are brand-new to a district or when you need a starting point to then refine later.
Did you know? Red Rover Hiring offers an in-platform AI tool designed just for this purpose — learn more here.
The cautions
Despite its versatility in creative support, AI still has blindspots that HR teams should remain aware of when taking advantage of this hack:
- Always take time to review and revise any artifact that AI creates. Simple mistakes (such as the wrong job title or incorrect statements about an open role) can spell disaster later in the hiring process.
- Assess each artifact against your district’s values and branding. Does it accurately reflect the district story you want to communicate with candidates or internal team members? Take these considerations into your revision process. AI is excellent at creating raw content from prompts, but it needs a lot of practice and time to become adept at “speaking” in a voice authentic to an organization’s brand and style.
- Be extremely discerning with when and where you use AI to generate a first draft. Projects like a recruitment plan need a healthy dose of strategic and critical thinking. Rather than outsource the full scope of the plan to AI, consider breaking it apart into specific sections where you might use AI to kickstart the outlining process. Sometimes, however, good old-fashioned brainstorming with human minds is the best approach.
In Red Rover’s Hiring solution, recruiters can take advantage of a library of prebuilt, fully customizable templates as an alternative to kicking off a first draft with AI. This resource is especially useful when recruiting for supplemental jobs, for which districts may not have formal job descriptions on file and ready for use.
Hack #2: Communicate more responsively
The opportunity
Expectations around communication have greatly changed as tools have enabled real-time responsiveness and greater access between people and organizations. This shift is both a blessing and a curse. HR teams, for example, can reach more qualified candidates across wider regions. Yet those same staff members may also face a ton of inbound information that can be challenging to manage.
AI can — and in many schools, already is — supporting front office and administrative staff with managing large volumes of communications. Chatbots embedded on district websites are the most common example. These AI personas can answer simple and straightforward questions from parents, substitute staff, and others. Anything that goes beyond the scope of the chatbot is then funneled to the right departments within the school or district.
Internally, AI also supports internal teams with communication matters, too. In addition to drafting initial emails or bulletin board announcements to all staff, district leaders can set up automated reminders for themselves or their teams about specific tasks for upcoming deliverables. Read this interview with EdWeek, where three principals share how they lean on AI bots to help them navigate more complex tasks and communications, such as writing a letter about a disciplinary issue for a parent using a neutral tone.
The cautions
Here again, AI can only tackle so much when it comes to communication. And in some cases, it is actually a terrible support system!
In short, AI isn’t great for communicating about highly nuanced or sensitive topics. Every district has its list of “touchy” or context-specific topics that may require an extra cautious approach to discussion. Communication about these subjects will require a level of finesse, discernment, and empathy with one’s audience that AI simply does not (yet) offer. This is true whether the communication is written, presented visually, or shared verbally.
Consider using AI to start an initial draft or outline for communications, but be wary of hitting “send” before careful scrutiny.
Hack #3: Summarize LOTS of data
The opportunity
Data is an essential piece of any district’s puzzle, whether it’s restrategizing the substitute teaching experience to improve retention or assessing whether or not to break a lousy long-term contract with a vendor for a subpar platform. Here, AI can save teams time and effort with understanding patterns across large datasets.
Take substitute teacher feedback, for instance. Amidst a fluctuating teacher shortage, districts are increasingly sourcing input from their guest staff to understand what drives them to accept job assignments (and what may drive them away from supporting their schools). Most survey platforms offer pre-created reports summarizing survey response trends, including open-ended feedback. While some of these reports and tools may lean on AI, district administrators can also prompt AI directly to glean the top takeaways from the raw data.
District teams may also use AI to research particular subjects, like developing new guidelines for how staff can use AI or a state’s policies on contract worker benefits. With the right prompts and guidance, AI can near-instantly synthesize findings about most topics from the Internet and give district leaders a starting point to take action.
The cautions
Though incredibly convenient and efficient, these capabilities of AI are not infallible.
- Understand the quality of the data fed to AI for analysis. If districts have incomplete or poor-quality data, AI will generate an incomplete and poor-quality output. If you are synthesizing data from multiple sources, you need interoperable systems that ensure data are securely and accurately shared between systems (including with AI tools).
- Hold a healthy skepticism of AI’s analysis of the data. It is always worth the time to at least look at the raw or underlying datasets that fueled an analysis from AI. There may be additional nuances or hidden patterns that these tools miss, which could be highly relevant to your district’s unique context or culture.
- Beware of confirmation bias. Even as you explore the data behind an AI-generated report, take care not to only focus on the data that supports the claims made by the machine!
Tips for AI success in the district or school office
As with any new K-12 technology, we will continue to learn what works and what doesn’t; however, having a strategic approach to AI is still important.
Here are tips for district and school leaders as they explore how AI can benefit their administrative staff:
- Focus on building AI literacy among your teams, offering guidance for their own critical thinking about when and where these tools help or harm their work.
- Set clear policies for all staff (including teachers) that clarify your district’s expectations around the appropriate and ethical use of AI tools. Be sure that these policies make sense alongside any policies in place for how AI may be used by students or for learning purposes in the classroom. CoSN offers an AI-readiness checklist to help districts ascertain if their policies are clear and thorough.
- Use beta testing and pilot programs to validate new or higher-risk use cases for AI. Even a two-week test period for using AI to, say, handle the initial review of applicants’ resumes can help staff surface potential blindspots and benefits that can then inform policy.
- Be extremely mindful of data privacy implications and liabilities when using AI for student and staff data. If available, review your state’s guidelines regarding data privacy and AI (or check out California and Oregon’s guidelines if your state hasn’t yet published any).
- Model healthy AI engagement for other staff, including teachers. A great way to foster positive use of any new tool is to create collaborative spaces for teams to share insights and feedback, such as professional learning communities.
- Be receptive to staff feedback and concerns about AI and act on it. We’re all on this learning journey together, and open discourse about this powerful technology will be essential for using it for students’ benefit.
Technology is constantly evolving — so too should your HR tools and processes. Red Rover embeds AI into our hiring solution to ease the effort required for those mundane tasks involved in recruiting. Request a demo today to learn more about how our modern K-12 workforce management solutions can save your staff time, energy, and headaches!
