The Campbell Union High School District’s decision to purchase a SchoolAI license and training sessions for $47,950 was two years in the making, driven by a desire to equip students to use artificial intelligence.

The recent boom in AI’s popularity influenced the Instructional Technology Advisory Committee as they built a technology plan and board policy involving AI, according to Kira Durant, the Coordinator of Instructional Technology.

“As a school district, it’s our job to make sure students have access to the tools and resources they need to be successful and navigate the world,” Durant said. “AI is a part of our world that’s not going anywhere. It’s our responsibility to provide students with a way to interact with that technology in a way that’s safe and secure.”

The committee considered three educational AI tools — MagicSchool, SchoolAI and Khanmigo — and selected SchoolAI after collecting feedback from teachers and students during a pilot program from October 2024 to January 2025.

Unlike ChatGPT and other chatbots, students can only use SchoolAI in “spaces” that teachers create and monitor. The AI can instantly provide feedback to each student, which broadens teachers’ reach in the classroom, according to Durant.

Math teacher Tiffany Ylarregui, who participated in the CUHSD AI Pilot, agrees. Using SchoolAI to create exit tickets allowed her to quickly gain more insight into each of her students’ struggles.

“It’s very hard to hold on to that data for 120 students and be like, ‘This student always struggles with graphing, and this student struggles with distributive property, and this student struggles with exponents,’” Ylarregui said. “But if I do an exit ticket every day using this AI, it was diagnosing problems and noticing reoccurring patterns.”

Amid concerns from students that AI will “take our teachers jobs,” Durant made it clear all forms of instructional technology are meant to help teachers, not replace them.

“Edpuzzle, SchoolAI, Pear Deck, IXL — none of those things could ever replace a human being teacher in a room,” Durant said. “That would be a misuse of technology, period, whether it’s SchoolAI or not.”

Reporting by Elliott Yau