(TNS) — It was a strange introduction for a teaching assistant.
“It has a huge potential to make us stupid,” teacher Aaron Gardner said recently as he explained a new tool to his students in his Capital High School Business Pathways class. “And sometimes I outright lie.”
Still, he challenged students to learn about China’s economic powerhouse through questions to “our AI friend,” the Chat for Schools artificial intelligence model, which Santa Fe Public Schools purchased in September 2024.
There seems to be no area untouched by artificial intelligence, which has crept into school districts around the world in recent years in hopes of reversing the trend of national educational decline.
This year, New Mexico went further, requiring K-2 students in traditional public and charter schools to take reading assessments using AI-powered tools, even though many school districts, including Santa Fe Public Schools, have backed away from developing firm policies regarding the use of AI technology.
The lack of clear guidance has created a wild west of AI use in the Santa Fe district, and a growing debate among teachers about its promise and its risks. A teacher working group that includes Gardner and astronomy teacher Joshua Cantrell meets monthly to discuss these questions, and there is a general feeling among them that AI is here to stay, whether we like it or not.
“I have serious concerns about that myself. The problem is here, and it’s not going away,” Gardner told students. “Your only chance of success in the future is to figure out how to take advantage of it.”
Across the hall, in Cantrell’s class, Chat for Schools wrote a song about space and sang it to the students in a synthetic female voice.
Development of guidance
Zelda Sanchez, a digital learning coach who teaches teachers how to use technology at K-8 Gonzalez Community School and Amy Beal Community School, said she gets “a whole range of reactions” from educators when discussing AI tools.
“Some people are like, ‘Yes, I know how to do it. Let me do it.’ And some people are like, ‘That’s the devil.’ It’s very scary,” she said.
The school board has moved away from creating formal AI policy, instead tasking staff like Katie Gruenewald, digital learning innovation coordinator, to develop ongoing “guidance” for educators and the curious public, informed by monthly sessions with district teachers.
At a recent meeting, the group reviewed various news articles highlighting concerns about AI’s impact on the environment, as well as a report on recent research into AI as a “cognitive crutch,” and found that students who used AI in their assignments performed worse on memory tests than their peers who did not.
One article suggested that agencies create formal policies to guide the use of AI, but that “at this time, [school] “The board has never indicated that it is interested in creating an official policy,” Grunewald told teachers.
Scott Robbins, a teacher at Shuto High School, exclaimed, “Isn’t that ridiculous? Because it’s the same as a cell phone.”
He said if students walked into a classroom where cell phone use was encouraged in class, the next teacher would threaten to confiscate their phones.
The district has a policy restricting cell phone use, but it’s largely based on class, and “what difference does it make?” Robbins said.
Although the monthly meetings are filled with disagreements, Grunewald described it as a healthy process for developing policy regarding new, untested technologies like AI in schools.
restrictions and restrictions
Instead of a firm policy, AI instruction is quite liberating for teachers, but many tools remain limited for students.
For example, the popular ChatGPT is not available, and teachers direct students to district-contracted tools like Chat for Schools. Chat for Schools looks like a traditional AI chatbot, but with controls for teachers and records student prompts.
Grunewald said “testing grounds” like the AI that Cantrell sings about are sprouting up in classrooms across the district.
She and the work group plan to meet in July to evaluate the success or failure of specific tools to provide to district leaders before the new school year.
For example, the district’s contract platform, Brisk, is an AI tool aimed at helping teachers create lesson plans. Several teachers praised the tool, saying it cut down on busywork and significantly reduced the time needed to create assignments.
Gardner said the combination of AI tools, along with Blisk, reduces lesson plan creation time from four to five hours to just 45 minutes, giving students time to “radically overhaul” their lessons and consider structural changes.
But the tool has limitations, Grunewald said, noting that teachers are encouraged to upload their special education students’ individualized education programs to better shape the tool’s outcomes.
Uploading an IEP that contains personal information, which is strictly protected by federal law, “is a high-risk use and we do not recommend it,” Grunewald said.
Data privacy remains a widespread concern surrounding AI tools. Contracts with companies like Google include provisions that limit data collection about Santa Fe students.
Grunewald said there were also concerns about teachers using third-party tools such as ChatGPT, which students are prohibited from using, and that imposing restrictions on teachers on certain tools would be “reconsidered” in the summer.
Amira, a state-adopted reading comprehension tool required for K-12 assessments, has drawn criticism from teachers and lawmakers because it has difficulty understanding students with different accents and speaking styles.
But Sanchez said her experience working with teachers on the tool and using it as a classroom teacher has been largely positive.
She detailed how she used the tool during parent-teacher interviews to show families how much their children’s reading skills had grown between the first and last Amira tests of the year.
“When you go to their last Amira, you hear the growth, like, ‘Oh my gosh. Look how much they’ve grown…We have so much to celebrate,'” she said.
When humans are superior
Although teachers’ reactions to AI range between support and disapproval, students in Gardner and Cantrell’s classes seemed to share a common view. That said, while this tool is useful for certain questions, it is limited in its capabilities.
“It’s especially helpful when work is tough,” said Damien Garcia, 15, a student in Gardner’s class. “But at the same time, I feel like you’re giving it too much power when you’re just trying to let it speak for you instead of being original and creative.”
Damien, who is aspiring to become a lawyer, said he has seen how AI has been used in the legal field and is dismissive of the idea that the profession will be replaced by AI.
“The computer just looks at the facts and tries to do the research,” he says. “But humans have emotions and we understand how laws have worked over time.”
Sarah Villa, 15, also in Gardner’s class, agreed that AI is a useful tool, noting that she uses it to ask very specific questions that can’t be found online.
But she was concerned about the environmental costs.
“I sometimes feel guilty when I use it,” she said, adding, “I know it’s not good for the environment.”
In Cantrell’s class, 17-year-old Angel Lopez also said she appreciated the AI’s ability to answer certain questions, but took a kind of rebuke at Cantrell’s songwriting practice.
Angell said there is “divisive opinion” on the appropriate use of artificial intelligence. He recalled his disgust at one of his school’s first AI classes two years ago. The challenge was to compare poems written by AI in a Spanish class.
“Poetry is more human,” he said. “I feel like I should do that.”
© 2026 The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, New Mexico). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
