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On a Friday last month, some Portland middle schoolers went home from school with new Nike swag and tales of an unusually eventful assembly.
The event, hosted at Beaumont Middle School on May 8, featured former NFL player, activist, and EdTech CEO Colin Kaepernick, Rip City Remix’s DJ O.G. Too, and a bunch of free swag, reportedly distributed via T-shirt cannon. (Two students allegedly got into an altercation over the free stuff, leading one to punch another.) Some students from George Middle School and Bridger Creative Science School were bused over for the assembly, which was meant to showcase the results of Portland Public Schools’ partnership with Kaepernick’s startup, Lumi Story AI.
Lumi Story AI, launched in 2024, is a literacy platform intended to help kids “imagine, write, illustrate, and publish their own stories”—with a little assistance from AI. Three PPS schools participated in the district’s Lumi Story pilot program, which the district began last fall. The assembly included presentations from some of the students who participated in the Lumi Story program. They told other students about their stories and the AI-generated characters created to accompany them. (All the students who participated in the Lumi Story pilot received Nike shoes, too.)
Though many parents didn’t know about the program or PPS’ partnership with it, the district’s decision to contract with Lumi Story last September was divisive from the start. The assembly celebrating the platform proved to be controversial, too.
“I thought it was obscene, honestly,” Meaghan O’Connell, whose sixth grade son attended the assembly, told the Mercury. “My kid is at public school, being marketed to by [a private tech company] and nobody told the parents about it… it really makes me question the judgment of the PPS admin, because that is not a sound judgment call.”
O’Connell and other parents and teachers described the Beaumont assembly as emblematic of what they see as the district’s questionable priorities. They are concerned with the district’s apparent willingness to embrace technology they feel is unnecessary in the classroom. As PPS continues to explore opportunities to bring AI into its schools, the schism between the district and skeptical teachers and parents seems likely to deepen.
Not your average pep rally
PPS likely didn’t expect the May 8 assembly at Beaumont Middle School to be controversial. As Valerie Feder, the district’s director of media relations, put it to the Mercury, the event was intended as an opportunity to “highlight student voice, imagination, and emerging opportunities for thoughtful technology integration in education.” In fact, the assembly was just one of many appearances Kaepernick has recently made at schools around the country to promote and discuss Lumi Story AI.
But the event left some teachers, parents, and students with a bad taste in their mouths.
Robin Hawley Crumrine is the parent of a 14-year-old middle schooler. In an email to PPS board members and Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong, Crumrine wrote that she was “thoroughly disturbed and disgusted” about the event after hearing about it from her daughter. Crumrine said her daughter felt the assembly was “chaotic and awful,” and told district leaders that if she had known about it ahead of time, she would’ve pulled her child out of school while it was happening.
To Crumrine, the assembly seemed like a “flashy and weird” promotional event for a “celebrity’s private pet project.”
“Why are our schools and students being pawns for a private company’s product? Especially an AI product with no proven successes?” Crumrine wrote. “I do not want my child involved at all with using this product.”
Crumrine was especially disturbed to hear the event had been filmed by representatives for Lumi Story AI. Feder said the filming was “intended to capture the student storytelling experience, student presentations and the overall celebration of the pilot” for a short recap video the company can share with participating school districts.
“The footage is not intended for commercial purposes or broad public distribution beyond showcasing and reflecting on the student experience connected to the pilot,” Feder said.
Many teachers were also upset with the assembly. One teacher who was present told the Mercury they had “never seen such a blatant promotional event happening during the school day, where our children are being sold a product without their understanding or consent.”
“Teachers are so upset about this. [We] were disgusted and thought it was inappropriate,” the teacher, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said. “Not every teacher is as anti-AI as all others, but no teacher knows enough about [Lumi Story] to ever get behind it and want to be in a promo video for it.”
PPS’ AI vision
The assembly came amid broader conversations about AI at PPS. Educational institutions nationwide are reckoning with the digital, philosophical, and ethical divides around machine learning technology. Some see it as essential to equip students with the skills to be competitive in a workforce likely to be dominated by AI. Others aren’t convinced it belongs in K-12 settings.
District leaders have spent the last few months working to develop rules and recommendations about incorporating AI in the classroom. In a draft guidebook the district released in April, PPS laid out its “AI vision,” stating a goal to “leverage AI as a transformative, ethical, and human-centered tool to accelerate student achievement, disrupt systemic inequities, and prepare every graduate for an AI-powered future.”
“Our vision is to cultivate a teaching and learning community where AI amplifies human potential and strengthens, but never replaces, the essential relationships at the heart of education,” the guidebook says.
Many teachers and parents didn’t resonate with the district’s techno-optimist perspective. PPS’ AI-curious stance has also been viewed with skepticism by several school board members, who disagree with the district’s suggestion that students may benefit from using the technology as a “brainstorming partner.”
“I think we’re at a pivotal moment in deciding what kind of a future we want in education,” the middle school teacher who was at the assembly said. “Do we want a future where we are enhancing critical thinking skills and our students’ ability to find their own unique voice, or do we want AI to replace their ideas and stunt that development?”
While generative AI tools haven’t been accessible long enough for scientists to study long-term effects, early research indicates that people who use the technology may face cognitive costs in return for short-term convenience. Children are likely particularly vulnerable to “cognitive stunting” from broad AI use, though experts have also found some benefit to narrow educational applications of the tools.
Earlier in the school year, Roosevelt High School science teacher and Oregon Education Association board member Chris Schweizer started a petition to “reject district management’s push to funnel public funds into the hands of private tech corporations for the right to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) tools for student use.”
The petition, which has garnered well over 100 signatures from teachers and parents, took issue with PPS’ decision to contract with Lumi Story and Amira Learning, another AI company in the EdTech space.
“Instead of normalizing students interacting with chatbots, we should direct resources to our libraries and focus on what our children need most: books, reading support, and schools fully staffed with supportive adults,” the petition states.
Those skeptical of the district’s AI use cite a few main concerns with the technology. AI programs demand significant energy and water, which critics say is out of step with PPS’ climate goals.
PPS’ AI guidebook recognizes that the technology’s environmental impact is real, but says there are ways to limit the damage.
“It is important not to perpetuate the individual blame and shame discourse that is associated with climate action. These data centers will be operating regardless of whether our staff and students use them,” the guidebook states. “This is an opportunity to engage students in critical conversations about… the way that technology revolutions can impact resource use, and inspire them to think creatively about a future of solutions.”
Teachers also have major labor concerns, fearing the district will decide to use generative AI tools to replace teachers and support staff.
“As I see AI programs piloted at PPS that are supposed to be ‘instructional assistants’ supporting reading, I worry about the use of AI to remove human beings from our schools,” Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) President Angela Bonilla said at a recent school board meeting.
While district leaders have said they don’t see AI as a replacement for human staff, labor advocates are wary.
Bonilla said the district has failed to meaningfully involve the teachers union in crafting AI policies, though PAT has demanded to bargain over the topic. (There were five educators in the AI advisory group, who helped draft the AI guidebook.) In her statement to the school board, Bonilla asked the district to “slow down with the adoption of AI.”
“It is more important for our students to learn how to communicate, collaborate, and problem solve than to put the right number into an AI program or say the same word over and over again to an AI literacy coach,’ Bonilla said. “A kid reading to a computer will not develop the love of reading in the same way as if they have a dedicated educator who is invested in them as human beings.”
But the most persistent concern with AI in schools is how it will impact students’ learning—and their brains in general.
Researchers behind an MIT study of the neural and behavioral consequences of using AI to assist with essay writing said the results “raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of [large language model] reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI’s role in learning.”
O’Connell, the parent of a sixth grader who attended the Lumi Story assembly, said she understands that writing and thinking creatively can be frustrating—but that’s how you learn.
“I don’t want my kids to learn to turn to an AI tool the second they feel a little at sea,” O’Connell said. “My middle schooler is learning how to do research and write persuasive papers right now, and I want him to learn this skill. I don’t want him to be one of those kids who goes to college and has never actually written a paper before.”
Students aren’t all aboard the AI hype train, either. Most students who responded to an AI perceptions survey PPS ran earlier this year indicated they don’t use AI, with many of them actively refusing on ethical grounds. PPS included several quotes representative of the students’ negative responses, including “AI is destroying our planet and our ability to think for ourselves,” and “it’s melting our brains and making us a lot stupider.”
What’s next?
While Feder indicated PPS’ Lumi Story pilot has officially concluded, the district may set out to implement other AI tools in the classroom, despite the pushback. District leaders say more staff training and community engagement on the subject is forthcoming, with teacher training sessions planned for the start of the next school year. The district has provided an online form to provide feedback on its draft AI guidebook.
But even if PPS can address all other issues people have with the technology, the debate over pedagogy seems particularly difficult to overcome.
“We’re at that juncture where educators and parents are pretty aligned on [this],” the teacher, who spoke to the Mercury on the condition of anonymity, said. “It seems like the district is the one who’s out of step.”
Bonilla’s response to teaching in a world of rapidly evolving technology: Focus on the basic skills people will always need to know.
“We keep trying to predict the future in education, as opposed to focusing on the things that are going to be consistent, regardless: Critical thinking skills, interpersonal skills, social-emotional skills,” Bonilla said.
Taylor Griggs is a news reporter for the Portland Mercury. She is interested in all of your ideas, comments and concerns, particularly those related to transportation, climate, labor, and Portland city… More by Taylor Griggs
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