AI Implementation Planning for Schools

Jay: This is Jay and Michael here on The IT Directors Podcast. I’m so pumped about today. We have a super guest for our viewers and our listeners. She is a personal friend of mine, an ex-colleague, and just an altogether rockstar. We have Brittni Tucker, the IT Director from Birmingham City Schools.

Jay: Brittni, how’s it going today?

Brittni: I’m well, Jay. Thank you. What about you guys?

Jay: Doing well. Look, you know, I’ve been excited about this episode, Brittni, because of your personality, your education, your charisma, and everything you brought to Birmingham City Schools. For our listeners and viewers, we worked together and I’ve since retired and moved on to Clear Winds, and Brittni is just killing it at Birmingham City Schools. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your role there, what you’re doing, and a little bit about your background.

Brittni: First and foremost, I was heartbroken when Jay left. I still kind of am, but I digress. I’ve been in technology since 2019. All of my experience prior to now was in higher ed. This is my first K-12 bout. It’s a learning experience. I have an undergrad in English and a master’s from Troy — Go Trojans! I should have also said “Go Blazers.”

Michael: Blaze on, baby.

Brittni: So, a master’s from Troy in government contracting. Policy and communication are always at the forefront for me. Growing up as a millennial and having all those advancements and pathways for technology, and just mixing all of those things together, that’s just a little bit.

Michael: I gotta say, millennials unite.

Jay: I love it. I’ll never forget our first staff meeting as directors in our old role, and Brittni was like, “Hey y’all, look, I’m an English major, so I document and I’m gonna write, and you’re gonna get tired of my emails and my documentation.”

Jay: But you do a great job at that, and I think in IT, documentation is lacking. Right?

Brittni: Yes.

Jay: And it was refreshing for me because she’s super detailed, and that’s not always the case of an IT director.

Jay: So that kind of gets us into the role of an IT director and what you’re doing at Birmingham City Schools. You’ve been tasked with rolling out AI district-wide where we didn’t have any AI. In today’s world, the question is, should we use AI or should we not use AI for students and staff in education?

Jay: So tell us a little bit about what you’re doing in that realm right now. What are you doing in Birmingham City Schools around AI policy and governance, and how are you implementing that?

Brittni: Sure. I think what’s most important to note first is developing your committee. That was my first thing working in higher ed. And as you can imagine working with faculty, you’ve got a slew of educators all on different spectrums. There are some with just master’s degrees, some that have gone further to conduct research and are able to give you good input in terms of what it looks like to organize a project or organize an initiative. Working at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa and working at Miles here in Birmingham, I was able to really get a background when it came to disseminating any form of technology, whether devices, applications, software, or whatever.

Brittni: You’ve kind of got to have a planned rollout, right? We don’t just wanna say, “Hey, here’s some technology, now use it.” We’ve got to make sure that our user community has the tools that they need. So I knew going into this, you know, yeah, I can have a plan. This is what I wanna do. We’ve got to have a policy. We’ve got to identify some technology to implement.

Brittni: That’s a given, but what does it look like on the back end? Because once I get it out there, I still have to have the support from my colleagues, other directors, and their officers to make sure that their respective areas are able to contribute to what we need to make sure that this is good for everyone.

Brittni: I tell everyone that will listen, do your research. See what’s happening nationwide, even other countries, just to see what they are gauging and how they are kind of gauging the success rate of what they’re implementing. Making sure that we have that governance committee so it’s not just people at the district level.

Brittni: We’ve got teachers and we’ve got other partners and other vendors/companies, making sure that those who have been doing this longer than we have are brought to the table, and we’re not really eliminating anyone because, for me, it’s not trying to limit what we’re putting out there, but it’s just making sure that we are doing it responsibly because we’re all being touched by AI.

Michael: I’ve got an even bigger question that’s more big picture. Everybody saw the Will Smith eating spaghetti video, and we’ve gone from Will Smith eating spaghetti looking kind of crazy to now, I can scroll on social media and see a cheetah that looks like it’s legitimately juggling. I’m fascinated by that. In this whole journey of AI, how do you take that step back and start seeing the benefits and the use cases that this could have in that?

Michael: In the field of K-12, when did it first start making sense that these Will Smith spaghetti videos from a few years ago are actually going to be a tool that’s useful and beneficial?

Brittni: For me, it started with programming. I tell people all the time, you’ve been doing this. We’ve used Google Maps for a while now. It’s just that the term “AI” is so lucrative and we see that everywhere. As a database administrator doing automations and programming, I have an institution and students that need certain things. Those things need to happen without necessarily human interaction, right? So for me, jumping into technology, that’s where I started with applications and databases. I tell people all the time, the AI component is really just programming. You are able to set those automations but then have a lot more computer recognition and more intelligence.

Brittni: I may say, I have a certain level of experience. I know that in certain situations I need to do X, Y, and Z in order to be proactive or reactive in a certain situation. But now I can rely on a computer to say, “Okay, Brittni, you may have missed X, Y, and Z steps. I’ve been able to think ahead for you to enact that.”

Brittni: Starting in admissions, I didn’t start in technology. I got my start in higher ed, on the recruitment side.

Michael: Same here.

Brittni: And it was showing students how to use technology to accomplish their goal. That really got me intrigued. Once I got that step, I moved into really working with applications and seeing the transition from that until now. You know, I can think back to when I was a student and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I came to Birmingham to go to UAB to do pre-med, and I finished with an English degree. So it was realizing my strengths and weaknesses. But I was 17, you know? I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. So for me, it’s more than just making sure that our students have that digital literacy and are able to identify things that are AI or have been influenced by AI, but then also giving them an opportunity to really utilize that and say, “Okay, well maybe I wanna develop a business.” Maybe I don’t know how to code, but I can use AI to generate a website or maybe automate some things for me.

Brittni: Taking that thought process and not only marrying curriculum standards and state standards to what they already need to be prepared to do once they graduate and making an AI-ready student. It’s also showing them that they can be entrepreneurs and do things beyond graduation that don’t necessarily always result in going to college.

Michael: That’s awesome.

Jay: Yeah, that’s great. So Brittni, you talked a lot about some of the policies in your enforcement and some of the things you’ve done. So for all of our listeners and viewers, Brittni is ground level. She started the AI data governance policy at Birmingham City Schools.

Jay: We didn’t have one. She’s founded the committee that she’s talked about and getting the right personnel on there, the stakeholders and the buy-in. You talked about that. What challenges have you seen with taking it from the committees and the stakeholders to the policy you have now?

Jay: What challenges have you seen about what is acceptable for use? What is not acceptable? Do we want to let ’em use Gemini? Do we let ’em use ChatGPT? Do we let ’em use Copilot? I know at Birmingham they’re Office 365 and Copilot, and you’re rolling it out. So how have you dealt with what is acceptable and putting it in practicality for our staff and our students?

Brittni: Sure. I’m telling my team all the time that it’s different in K-12 because you do have a certain focus on educational technology. In higher ed, there’s no distinction between IT and educational technology. You know, I might spend the first half of my day in the IT shop working on devices or doing certain things, and the latter half of my day is going into a classroom and showing faculty or students how to use certain technology. Whereas in K-12, I have a designated team for educational technology. I have a designated team that does networking infrastructure. So that’s the distinction. Making sure that it’s not just my IT team that is supporting my users, but also the educational technology team makes sure that they are supporting our teachers. It’s not just necessarily making sure that the students have what they need that’s a priority for us, but my first step is professional development and making sure that my teachers have what they need so that they can deliver.

Brittni: Then also, I think it’s scaling. I talk about equity all the time. When you think about technology in our school district, we are one-to-one, meaning that every student typically does have a device. But it’s not just about that. I wanna make sure that yes, they have the device and know how to use it, but in a lot of cases for us, that student is bringing home a technology that is utilized, and if I’m being honest, by the entire family. It doesn’t just stop with the student. Mom might be using it, auntie, grandma, you know, whomever. So that student is a catalyst. They’re at home saying, “I know how to do X, Y, and Z.”

Brittni: Then grandma knows now, okay, well I can use a banking app. Then she’s able to do what she needs to do in money management and not just go to the bank, you know? “My grandchild was able to show me blah, blah, blah, because this is what they learn.”

Brittni: It’s scaling that. In higher ed, I might just have an institution. You might have undergrad programs and graduate programs and support. But in K-12, where I’ve got almost 50 schools in the district, and each school — I tell my team all the time — at the district level, we’re like the federal government, right? We can say, “Yes, this is what you should be doing” and put some parameters in place. But at the schools, they’re kind of like state governments.

Jay: No, that’s a great analogy.

Brittni: And the principals dictate because they know their teachers, they know their administration, and they know their students. Whereas in higher ed, I can kind of say, “Okay, well as a policy, nobody’s using USB drives. If you put it into the device, it’s gonna reject it.” But I can’t really set those standards. I’ve worked at Southern Research, so even working in that space where we are getting a trillion attacks a day, we have to be mindful of those things.

Brittni: This is a little different because I have to kind of be more empathetic towards each situation. I can’t just set a standard for the entire district. So when we think about acceptable use, I can say, “Okay, well every student will get this type of device. If they’re K-8, they’ll get this. 9-12 will get this. We’ll have these applications” and things of that nature. But at the same time, different schools dictate what they want to use. I have to be in the mindset of making sure my team can support whatever they are needing.

Jay: That is so great. I want to touch on something that Brittni mentioned because a lot of our listeners and viewers, they don’t know this about K-12. So Birmingham City Schools is a very large school district, probably one of the top three or four in the state of Alabama. So they operate and function way differently than a small school district that has like two schools.

Jay: You mentioned that the central office is like the federal government. So we put stuff in place for what is acceptable for AI policies. Each school is run like a state and the principal is the governor of that state.

Brittni: Right.

Jay: I thought it was very interesting, Brittni’s approach about how you’re just giving them guidelines around AI and you’re giving them adoptable use stuff around AI and saying, “Hey, this is what we found. This is what we like.” But every principal does it a little differently per student because their demographics are different. Their cultures are different. Their communities are different in those areas. So I think that’s really awesome because I think in leadership sometimes, especially in K-12, we can just blanket it, right? And that’s not always the best. And I think that’s what’s so unique about what Brittni has done, Michael.

Jay: You take it and you realize we’ve got to give them some guidelines, but we’re giving them some flexibility because at the end of the day, that’s what you need in a corporation. You might be able to do X, Y, Z, but in local K-12, it is not the case.

Michael: As it trickles down to teachers, in regards to AI, are they nervous about it? How are they reacting?

Brittni: There’s a fine line between technology and curriculum, right? So I try to stay in my lane. Whatever curriculum may need, of course we support. I tell my team all the time, in some cases, especially with technology, you can get into the space of trying to dictate to your users, like Jay just mentioned.

Brittni: “This is what we’re gonna do.” So I try to tell them, we aren’t in that space for us. Let them tell us what they want to do or what they need. We will see if we can handle it, if we can do it. And then if not, we’ll move forward.

Brittni: But to answer your question, it’s really been phenomenal. I have a lot of teachers, and I love the fact that I have an educational technology coordinator and a coach at every school in addition to a librarian. So there are about three people that the school may have, like a technology teacher or a computer science teacher, but I have three designated people that administration can go to and say, “Hey, the printer won’t print,” or, “I have this idea that I wanna do with drones, help me enact this.”

Brittni: And so those people typically will inform my team or myself, and then we get together to determine how we can support that. So we move in a way that it’s not, “These are your options, pick one.” We let them say, “This is what I’m trying to do.” Then we move along with local groups and organizations like Ed Farm, who support us tremendously. They will say, “Well, we can designate these folks to this particular project at this particular school and help you all map out the project management for that.” Because I only have three specialists for educational technology for over 45 schools. As you can imagine, that’s a lot for them. So having those partners is beneficial. I’ve been using this because they go to conferences and they interact with different vendors and bring different things back to the district.

Brittni: If it’s not something that I can do at a district level, the principals will say, “Hey, let’s do this for my school. Just help us put it together.” And we’ll pay for it. We’ll do X, Y, and Z. I’ve had conversations, and things are mixed. Teachers are nervous about using AI because they don’t want students to cheat, right? I think that’s a national concern, international. I’ve hit it back to them, “Okay. I understand that. But at the same time, what about using it as a resource?” Show them how to use it, how to maybe check their work. And not every LLM or chatbot that you use is of the mindset that it has to prompt and give an answer. Some of them will continue to prompt and allow the student to kind of make their own assertions and say, “Hey, is this right? Should I be moving this way?” More guided instructions. So we just try to work together to make sure that we do our research and can provide what they need.

Michael: And that even hits at another thing. There’s been a lot of conversation on how we use it as a tool and not something that reduces critical thinking ability, right? How do we use it in a way that it can benefit us, but not substitute that critical thinking?

Jay: Everyone that knows me knows I’m very pro AI, right? I like using it for the tool set. I like it for the productivity part of it. And I love the fact that you are not putting constraints around our staff and our teachers and students around AI. You’re enabling them.

Jay: Like Michael said, the critical thinking piece. I think on a novice level, so many people have this negative connotation like, “Oh man, AI’s just awful. It’s gonna make dumb people.” No, it’s gonna make smarter people even smarter, right? It’s gonna make intelligent people look even more intelligent because they know how to use the tools.

Jay: I think what you’re doing at Birmingham is such a roadmap for all of our listeners and viewers and all these other school districts. They don’t have any policy around that. So you’re creating a student base that’s more AI-driven, and they go out in the workforce and they’re gonna learn how to use these tools.

Jay: I remember last spring — Brittni and I were downtown at Sloss Tech. Shout out to Sloss Tech. But anyway, Sloss Tech is a huge technology conference here in Birmingham, Alabama. They had the whole AI deal, and you and I went to the AI Birmingham session. I remember you were just starting, like, “Jay, I gotta start this AI here at Birmingham Schools. This is my initiative as superintendent.” You were just starting. And now look where you are.

Jay: And we’re using AI in emails and tools, and your students are rolling it out. That’s so exciting for me to see because that was just last spring and now you have a committee, now you have a policy, and we have some guidelines. I think for our listeners and viewers, they need to reach out and get your roadmap on how you accomplished that because it’s not easy. You know what I mean? Education moves slowly, and so it’s not easy to implement these things. I think when we approach it, Michael, like a tool set, that’s where we see how you can really become super successful with these AI tools.

Jay: We’ve been using it for years. Alexa — what do people think that is? Google! I hear teachers say, “I don’t want my kids to cheat.” Well, they can use Google the same way. You can upload an image into Google and it’ll tell you what it is.

Brittni: And they do.

Jay: Yesterday I was at a meeting at a school. These students have learned how to get around the firewall. I’m not gonna mention the school we were at, but we were meeting with a customer. They’ve learned how to get around the firewall because they realized if you keep crashing the search engine with too many searches, it crashes it. And for that split second when it crashes the firewall, they’ll open up another window and they can put in and go play Fortnite and do whatever. It opens up like a window.

Jay: That is so incredible. These students are this smart. Let’s teach them AI — they could be the future leaders in this whole country. I think you’re doing that, which is great, so I commend you on that.

Jay: As we close and we wrap up, what is one thing that you would like to tell other leaders in education or leaders in business around implementing an AI policy? What is one thing that you would like to share? Here’s how we got started, or here was our approach. What do you think about that?

Brittni: I think for me it’s just being open-minded. I would say across any type of industry, but in education, that’s most important because I have a bunch of colleagues that are from all different backgrounds and they aren’t dummies. These people are working in their field. They are continually doing the research that they need to do to develop their own departments. I couldn’t just go into it bullheaded and say I know best, I’ve got this experience, I’ve done X, Y, and Z.

Brittni: There are times where you have to say, “Okay.” Even with my team, “Hey, Ms. Tucker, I don’t know if that’s the best,” because I’m new to this district, right? They’ve been here. And so while I don’t necessarily want to perpetuate the past, in some cases I do want to make sure that we consider everything that has happened and the learning styles and the adoptive styles of my users. Because I can push out ideas all day, but if they’re not gonna be receptive, or if it’s a culture where I may need to take other steps to make sure that we adopt it a certain way, then I’m gonna have to do that.

Brittni: I can’t just say, “This is my way and we’re gonna do it.” I think it is of course doing my own research and drawing on my own experience. But then I think largely it was not even necessarily bringing external resources in, but listening to the folks that I work with daily, because they may not necessarily know all the technical pieces of AI, but they know what it’s gonna take to make sure we become the top district. I tell them all the time, “We are going to be the top district.” We are on our way. Creating the governance committee was something that spoke to that.

Brittni: You’re gonna have superintendents, presidents, CEOs, whomever, that are going to have their own initiatives. It’s my job to make sure that we meet that, but then also make sure that we do it in a secure way and in a way that’s not going to cause us to keep repeating certain actions because it wasn’t adopted in the way that we expected.

Brittni: I think just having an open mindset and making sure that you include everyone. I wanna make sure that we hear from everyone. I think that’s key.

Jay: That’s fantastic. Mike, do you have anything to add before we close here?

Michael: Hey, I appreciate you, and there are several nuggets I’d love to even go into further. We can do that at a later time. I appreciate your intentionality in supporting your team and supporting both aspects. Coming from higher ed, I know the differences between your administration, your staff, your faculty, and I know the lines you have to walk and the buy-in you have to get. So I can appreciate how you are attempting to champion both sides — what their goals are and then yours as well.

Jay: I think you’re doing a great job. You know, Michael’s worked in higher ed. He’s serving K-12 now.

Jay: I’ve worked in K-12. We’re serving you guys now. You’re in K-12. It is a very navigational beacon. You’re doing a fantastic job. We’re excited just to promote that and promote what Birmingham School students are doing around AI, the teachers and staff.

Jay: I’m excited because we want to kind of see this AI thing grow, and so it’s just fun for me because I remember being at the first meeting when you were like, “Jay, the superintendent said I gotta do this AI thing.” Now look at you. I’m very excited for you.

Jay: So as we close today, follow us on all of our platforms @TheITDirectorsPodcast. We’re on LinkedIn. We’re on YouTube. We’re on Spotify and Instagram, so go check us out. Follow Clear Winds, and we’re gonna have Brittni’s information in the show notes so you can reach out to her directly and she can provide some help and guidance. She didn’t know that, but we’re just offering that up to everyone. We thank you guys, and this is Clear Winds — we are out.