White County Implements New School AI Policy

The White County Board of Education has a new policy regulating artificial intelligence usage throughout the district.

Schools Director Kurt Dronebarger said the policy handles various cases such as if a student writes a paper with AI or creates a bot that sends harmful messages to other students. Dronebarger said the main goal of the policy is to ensure the safety of both students and employees in the district.

“Times change, you know, we’ve got to stay in tune with what’s going on in technology and it moves faster than we can deal with it,” Dronebarger said. “But this is going to be our first step to itemize what different programs are being used in our school system, what parameters are allowed, and just try and keep it in a box the best that can.”

Dronebarger said artificial intelligence has become a part of daily life for everyone so they are working to make sure it is used appropriately and fairly. He said Technology Supervisor Ashley Rust is creating a list of programs used throughout the district and will continue to study artificial intelligence for other programs or ways it could impact schools.

“There’s a lot of, probably more unknown about AI right now than there is known, and so we want to just make sure that we stay in the know as best we can and keep our students safe,” Dronebarger said.

The policy states that students are to be taught when AI usage is appropriate, how to see if an AI response is accurate, and the difference between using AI for support or for cheating.

The new policy came about as a recommendation the board received from the Tennessee School Boards Association.