AIDEN BUZZETTI: AI Is Coming To Classrooms Fast. School Districts Aren’t Ready

Artificial intelligence is hurtling toward American classrooms, fueled by federal incentives, corporate promises, and a wave of hype about “personalized learning.” The White House pushes school districts to adopt AI at breakneck speed, and tech companies are lining up to cash in.

But there’s one glaring problem: most local school boards have no idea what they’re signing up for—and kids could pay the price.

The federal government’s stance is clear. In April, President Trump signed an executive order fast-tracking AI adoption in schools, aiming to make students “AI-literate” and competitive in tomorrow’s workforce. On paper, it sounds like a leap forward, but here’s reality: the infrastructure to safely and effectively implement AI doesn’t exist yet. Elected board members– who are not engineers, cybersecurity experts, or data scientists–run most of America’s 13,000 school districts.

Yet they’re being asked to sign multi-million-dollar contracts with AI vendors, oversee algorithms that can shape a child’s education, and centralize troves of sensitive student data. There are no clear federal guidelines to help them make those decisions. This leaves the door wide open for vendors to overbill districts for services they provide or mishandle information they’re provided by the school district. In short: rushing to implement new technologies in schools leaves it ripe for abuse from third parties.

We’ve already seen what can go wrong. In 2022, hackers breached the Los Angeles Unified School District systems, leaking thousands of student records, which included student information covering drivers’ license numbers, email addresses, and academic records. A year later, a vendor building an AI chatbot for the district mishandled private student data