AI Tools Raise Privacy Questions at Natrona County Schools - GovTech

The Natrona County School District’s Policy Committee met Monday to examine what its existing policies and student handbooks say about AI, while district administrators outlined some of the tools teachers are already using.

The discussion had originally been scheduled for April but was pushed to September after a lengthy conversation about graduation requirements.

For Trustee Jenifer Hopkins, however, the question of how to use AI in schools is secondary to a more fundamental question: Should schools be using it at all?

Hopkins said she believes AI should be avoided in schools altogether.

“I'm greatly concerned about future generations' foundation, reading and writing, and being able to use [a] sentence correctly,” Hopkins said. “I'm not for any AI use. I don't think teachers should be recommending that kids go home and use it and put certain keywords in … I don't think it's a matter of training our teachers to use it. I think it's a matter of just not using it.”

But AI is already part of the picture in Natrona County classrooms.

Assistant Superintendent Amy Rose said teachers have access to tools such as Turnitin.com, Grammarly and GPTZero, which can be used to flag potential AI-generated work and plagiarism. The district does not require teachers to use the programs, but they can serve as an additional layer of protection against academic dishonesty.

That use of AI-related technology raised another concern for Trustee Alex Petrino: What happens to student information when teachers put it into those systems?

Petrino pressed district administrators Monday on how student data is protected and whether the tools teachers use are closed systems or open platforms.

“The systems that teachers are using to check to see if AI is used, are those closed systems or open systems?” Petrino asked. “And have we signed business associate agreements with those systems as a district to protect privacy?”

Open AI systems are publicly available for individual users and anything put into the system goes back to continue training the model, said Dean Siemens, director of the Digital Learning Center at Casper College.

“In this situation, the user is interacting directly with that company's service, the AI is running on the provider's infrastructure, and the individual is responsible for understanding and following the provider's terms of service and privacy practices,” Siemens said. “All of the data entered is used to train that AI model.”

On the flip side, a closed system would keep all of the data within its own environment for the institution using it.

“A closed or private AI environment would be one where an institution hosts and manages its own AI model within its own infrastructure,” he said. “The model could work with institutional data and information while keeping that information within the institution's controlled environment. Building and maintaining this type of system generally requires considerably more technical infrastructure, staffing, and resources. The data within the institution trains itself on the institutional data but nothing else.”

The district does not pay for any closed AI systems, with one exception: Gemini, which is available on district-owned computers, said Trevor Mahlum, executive director of district services.

Mahlum said that while some of the other tools teachers use may operate as open systems, they do not generate new material based on the information entered into them.

“If there's potential that teachers are putting student data into those, and it's an open system and not a closed system, that student data is out there, and so that's one of my concerns with this privacy piece,” Petrino said. “Do our teachers and our district staff know the difference between a closed system and an open system and how that information is potentially just out there?”

WHERE'S THIS GOING?

The committee took no action Monday, and none was expected. Instead, the meeting marked the beginning of a broader conversation among trustees, district administrators and stakeholders about whether the district’s existing approach to AI needs to change.

For now, much of the groundwork is already in place. District policies and student handbooks contain language addressing generative AI, with its use prohibited in several circumstances.

Administrative Regulation 6301, which outlines academic honesty expectations, identifies several types of violations, including fabrication, plagiarism and digital citizenship violations:

- Fabrication: Falsifying or inventing any information, data or citation; presenting data that were not gathered in accordance with standard guidelines defining the appropriate methods for collecting or generating data and failing to include an accurate account of the method by which the data were gathered or collected.

- Plagiarism: Any representation of another's ideas, words, or work as one's own. Plagiarism includes the misuse of published material, electronic material, and/or the work of other students. The original writer who intentionally shares his/her paper for another to copy, without the permission of the teacher, has also engaged in plagiarism.

- Digital citizenship violations: Per acceptable use policy, students should refrain from using technological resources for violations that involve academic dishonesty. These include using technology to copy, plagiarize, collaborate inappropriately, sending or receiving test questions, accessing another’s account, hacking into computer systems, or unauthorized use of artificial intelligence programs/software that generate photos, videos, or text.

The regulation also outlines student responsibilities.

“Each student is expected to do their own work on individual assignments. This includes test taking, assignments, class work, and the original creation of essays, research papers, and other writing assignments… All work submitted by a student should be a true reflection of his or her own effort and ability … Students should actively discourage and refuse to aid in any form, cheating or plagiarism by others,” according to the regulation.

Staff are expected to “construct expectations regarding use of artificial intelligence programs/software that generate photos, videos or text.”

The district’s student handbook goes a step further, incorporating generative AI into its definitions of academic dishonesty, digital citizenship and honesty, making unauthorized AI use a violation of district policy.

But the conversation is far from over.

At the committee’s next meeting, representatives from different groups across the district are expected to share how AI is being used in their classrooms and schools. Those discussions will help inform the committee as it considers whether changes to the district’s existing policies are needed.

The Policy Committee is scheduled to meet again Oct. 26.

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