By Shauna Lund, Iron County School District
Iron County School District teachers will soon gain access to School AI as they finish the school year. Superintendent Dr. Lance Hatch demonstrated possible uses for teachers with the Board of Education Tuesday.
Hatch said formal training with teachers will take place Aug. 8 as the district begins the 2025-26 school year. Already, he said, teachers who were part of the AI committee have found practical uses for it, including better feedback on essays and prompts to help students in writing lessons.
Board Member Tiffiney Christiansen said her main concern would be what access the platform would give to students. Hatch said it is a very closed environment and the platform only accesses sources approved by the teacher. Other AI sources do not have those parameters in place and so they haven’t been opened for student use.
“In this system there’s enough guardrails that we don’t have to worry about that,” he said.
Another great feature of the platform is that it can be tied to Utah standards. Hatch said teachers can share their lessons with other teachers on their grade team, throughout the district and even the state.
Board members also heard more from the technology department about how access to websites are blocked and how issues are reported. Each website falls into a specific category. The district can choose to block an entire category, but then open access to vetted sites. The district is also able to see how a student accessed a site if there is an issue brought to their attention.
Board Member Tyrel Eddy said as a parent he wanted to know how many times students access sites they should not access. He suggested creating a committee. Board Vice President Michelle Tullis said it might be just as effective to have the technology department report to the Board a few times each year.
Secondary Director Roy Mathews said parents can report any issues to their school principal or even anonymously through the Report a Concern link at the bottom of the district website and every school website.
Many of the board members said they were unaware of the Report a Concern link and asked for it to be made more visible. Hatch said the district will work on getting that link more visible.