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LOWER POTTSGROVE — The Pupil Services Department in the Pottsgrove School District will now be using artificial intelligence to handle some of the repetitive tasks.
Wednesday night, the school board unanimously approved a contract with a St. Paul, Minn.-based company named Creatively Focused to install a closed-structure AI system.
“It’s not going to be searching the internet or anything,” explained Substitute Superintendent Ann Marie Lucas, who is also the administrator who runs the Pupil Services Department. “It will operate entirely within our system, searching our documents and procedures to provide services,” she told the school board Wednesday night.
According to the bid contract provided with the agenda item, Creatively Focused wrote, “school identified administrators bogged down by repetitive operational tasks, need to focus on strategic leadership, need for support to boost competence and confidence of staff.”
The company will “build and deploy the district’s closed-source agent, provide training/overview for staff, deliver monthly insights. District: Provide source materials for build, Communicate purpose and access to staff, Participate in feedback and evaluation.”
The document added, “since this is a closed-source AI, all content and data remain within the district’s secure environment.”
Lucas said the project was “put together very thoughtfully” and that it had been vetted by the legal department.
The annual cost of the contract is $10,000. “They came in pretty high, and I negotiated them down to this,” said Lucas, adding that the amount is in the budget.
“AI is here, and we’re kind of behind the times if we’re not embracing it,” she said. Other districts are already using it, so we want to make sure we’ll be using a tool we actually have control over.”
“We’re hopeful this will help us be more efficient and effective and also just help us with our students,” Lucas said.
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