When Kadion Phillips first joined Shrewsbury Public Schools in Massachusetts as Director of Information Technology a few years ago, one of the first tasks on his agenda, like many other district leaders, was tackling how to implement artificial intelligence.
To that end, Phillips and district superintendent Joseph Sawyer established a special committee of approximately 20 staff and faculty members to address the rapid development and implementation of AI.
Ultimately, the Shrewsbury AI committee came up with five pillars to guide the district’s use of AI:
- Preparing students for an AI future - Focusing on readying students for a future in which AI tools will be infused throughout society, higher education, and the workplace.
- Effectively utilizing AI learning tools for students - Using AI tools to appropriately support student learning across all classrooms.
- Implementing AI working tools for staff - Finding the right AI platforms to help faculty and staff to work more efficiently and effectively.
- Establishing guardrails against inappropriate AI use - Putting effective rules and best practices in place to protect data and discourage inappropriate use of AI.
- Ensuring AI practices promote academic integrity - Creating an effective framework for acceptable use of AI by students in the context of academic integrity.
Rather than selecting specific tools, the committee has worked to align these pillars with the district's "Portrait of a Graduate" skills, such as critical thinking and innovation.
“We also started creating a guiding document, more of a framework, that we're hoping to get out to staff in terms of, ‘Here's where we are right now, and here's what we're trying to get to,” Phillips says. “We're also developing a one-pager of AI dos and don'ts to release this year.”
For this and his other work in his district, Phillips was recently recognized with a Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award. He shares his continued efforts around AI and for improving the district’s cybersecurity.
A Work In Progress
The son of a math teacher from Jamaica who eventually went on to be a school principal, Phillips was exposed early to the possibilities of a career in education and technology. He was working in tech support for a startup company near Times Square in New York City with plans on going to grad school for physics when he heard that there was a local teacher shortage.
“I decided the best way to study for grad school is to teach physics,” Phillips says. He became a teaching fellow since he didn’t have a teaching degree, which was the shortest path to certification. “I was basically kind of thrown into the classroom in New York City after doing a summer intensive, and it was definitely rewarding but also challenging.”
While teaching, his tech expertise helped him become the de facto tech guy at his school, helping to resolve any issue, from fixing the copier to helping in the computer lab to running data analysis. Although he eventually became an assistant principal, following in his mother’s footsteps, a colleague suggested another path.
“I met the tech director in Rochester and he was telling me, ‘Hey, this is what you should do, you should be a tech director,” Phillips recalls. “And I'm like, ‘a tech director, what’s that?’ I'd never heard of that role. I know you had one person help send emails, but I never really thought somebody was in the back end coordinating it all.”
Phillips and his wife, also an assistant principal in NYC, were looking for a better work-life balance at this point, so they moved to suburban Massachusetts where she had been raised. After diving into tech leadership positions in a few districts, Phillips eventually ended up in Shrewsbury about two years ago, just in time for AI’s arrival in education.
As mentioned, Phillips has been proactive in implementing AI, although there are always challenges, such as staff who still are resistant to allowing it in their classrooms because they can’t get past the potential for cheating, and navigating the student data privacy aspects. Like for many districts, it continues to be a work in progress.
“We aren't necessarily picking a tool and saying this is what you need to use but it's like thinking about, ‘Hey, what are the opportunities where AI could be useful?’” Phillips says. “We figured out the skills that we want kids to get with AI is going to be similar to what we did with our portrait of a graduate, such as critical thinking, content mastery, innovation, resilience, collaboration, and even the global citizenship piece.”
‘Locking Down Without Locking Out’
In addition to a focus on AI, Phillips has prioritized cybersecurity as a foundational element of the district’s technology plan, which has earned his team a Massachusetts Governor’s Citation for Municipal Cybersecurity.
“We try to lock things down as much as possible,” says Phillips, adding that they have multifactor authentication on all systems now. “We also have tiered access, like limiting who needs to get access to what. So like our main account doesn't have access to our domain controller, for example, so even if our regular account were to get compromised, it wouldn't have any access to our other internal systems.”
Or, as he puts it, “locking down without locking out” users.
Despite his best efforts, however, Phillips knows cybersecurity is sometimes out of his hands.
“It's just one of those things where we're trying to do best practices but the vendors for our most critical systems, we also have to trust that they're also doing the same,” he says, noting some recent high-profile data breaches. “I think that's what keeps us IT workers up at night, you know, showing up in the morning and seeing that your system potentially could be compromised.”
The district utilizes a state-funded grant to provide training and conduct phishing campaigns, which has improved staff awareness and the reporting of suspicious activities.
Even so, cybersecurity needs to be a constant commitment.
“You can create all this security, do all the training, and build this wall around it,” Phillips says. “But then somebody just leaves the door right open.”
Tools They Use
- Google for Education
- Schoology
- Seesaw
- ParentSquare
- Zoom
- Apple MacBooks and iPads
- Epson
- Fresh Service
