New Westfield AI Plan To Address Acceptable, Ethical Use In Schools

WESTFIELD, NJ — The school district is currently developing an Artificial Intelligence plan following the Board of Education(BOE)'s adoption of a new AI policy.

Board Vice President Sonal Patel said on Tuesday that the Curriculum, Instruction, and Programs Committee looked at components of a draft of the plan at its recent meeting.

"The district AI program is designed to provide students, teachers, and families clear guidance on the acceptable and ethical use of AI in the Westfield schools," said Patel at the Nov. 19 BOE meeting. "Components of the plan provide clarity on procedures and guidelines for when AI can be used in the school assignment, approval of AI tools, prohibitive uses of AI, and consequences for inappropriate use of AI."

The Board adopted Policy 2365 at its Oct. 15 meeting and addresses all types of generative AI technologies that create new content or outputs from a prompt to produce text, images, videos, or music.

"The Board recognizes the potential of AI tools to enhance and transform a student’s educational and co-curricular experience in the district. However, AI tools are not inherently knowledgeable and are trained from large amounts of data collected from various sources. Outputs generated by an AI tool may be inaccurate, inappropriate, or incomplete. Therefore, to ensure the responsible use of AI and to maintain academic integrity, students shall be required to comply with the district’s Acceptable Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence Plan (AI Plan) that will include proper citation and/or documentation methods to support the content provided by an AI tool in a student assignment," according to the policy.

Additionally as part of the policy, the district is creating an AI Plan which will include details addressing the following issues:

1. A list of the schools, departments, and/or grade level(s) in the district where a staff member is authorized to permit student use of AI in assignments;
2. An explanation on when, how, and to what extent a staff member may permit a student to use AI in assignments;
3. A procedure that requires each staff member authorized to permit students to use AI in assignments to inform the students at the time of the assignment the conditions in which AI may be used;
4. A procedure for the Superintendent or designee and the AI Coordinator(s) in the district to approve and review the use of AI tools and a process to ensure strategies will be implemented in the district to address any issues regarding student use of AI in assignments. This may include, but not be limited to, areas such as academic integrity, bias, inaccuracy/misinformation, copyright/licensing unknowns, privacy violations, and equity of access;
5. A list of prohibited uses of AI that violate this Policy or the district’s Code of Student Conduct, which may include any use of AI which does not align with the conditions set when the assignment was provided to the student; using AI to complete an assignment in a way that falsely represents the assignment as the student’s own; using AI to purposefully create misinformation or to misrepresent others with the intent of harming, bullying, or intimidating an individual(s); using AI with confidential student or staff personal information; and other prohibited behaviors and/or conduct listed in Policy and Regulation 2361 – Acceptable Use of Computer Networks/ Computers and Resources;
6. A list of consequences if a student violates any provision of this Policy or AI Plan which may include, but not be limited to, the consequences listed in Policy and Regulation 2361 – Acceptable Use of Computer Networks/Computers and Resources or Policy and Regulation 5600 – Student Discipline/Code of Conduct;
7. A procedure where the AI Coordinator(s) in the district, supervisors, administrative staff members, and other staff members review the procedures used in determining the activities where AI may be permitted to be used by students to ensure staff members are implementing AI procedures in accordance with this Policy and the district’s AI Plan;
8. A procedure to be used by a staff member to address suspected plagiarism or academic dishonesty using AI in a student’s assignment in accordance with the provisions of Policy 5701;
9. A procedure to ensure a student accused of any alleged violation of the provisions of this Policy or the district’s AI Plan is provided appropriate due process before making a final determination on the student’s conduct in accordance with the provisions of Policy and Regulation 5600 – Student Discipline/Code of Conduct;
10. The method(s) or format(s) to be used by students on how to cite or document content generated from any AI platform that is used in an assignment.

The new policy and plan came after students at Westfield High School made and distributed fake pornographic images of other female students at the school last year. Read More: AI Made Porn Of Westfield HS Students Prompts Investigation

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