Free planning tool · The Library · No. 03
The staff AI boundaries one-pager.
One page your whole staff can actually remember. A leadership team fills it in together, in one sitting, and every blank gets a real answer. When it’s done, a teacher knows what’s allowed, what never is, and who to ask, without reading a forty-page policy. It works alongside your policy; it doesn’t replace it.
1. What AI is for here
Name the tasks where staff may use approved AI tools. Be concrete: a task a person could point to, not a category.
Approved tools, by name and versionOnly tools the school has reviewed; a tool nobody has reviewed does not belong on this list.1. ______________________ 2. ______________________ 3. ______________________
Tasks where AI use is welcomeExamples to consider: drafting a parent newsletter, brainstorming lesson hooks, summarizing an article you provide, first-pass rubric wording.1. ______________________ 2. ______________________ 3. ______________________ 4. ______________________
2. What AI is never for here
The never list is the heart of the page. Write it plainly enough that nobody can claim confusion.
Never, regardless of toolStrong candidates: grading or scoring a student’s work as the grade of record, writing evaluative comments about a named student, deciding placement, discipline, services, or eligibility, and communicating a consequential decision to a family.1. ______________________ 2. ______________________ 3. ______________________ 4. ______________________
Why, in one sentence the staff wrote themselves__________________________________________________________________________
3. Data rules: what never gets pasted in
Most AI trouble in schools is a data problem before it is anything else.
Never enter into any AI toolStart from: student names or identifiers, education records, health or family information, staff personnel matters, and anything covered by FERPA or your state’s student privacy law.1. ______________________ 2. ______________________ 3. ______________________
The test a staff member applies before pastingExample: “Would I put this on a postcard? If not, it doesn’t go in.” Browser extensions read the document you have open. If that document has a student’s name in it, the postcard test already failed.__________________________________________________________________________
4. Human review: what gets checked before it ships
AI-assisted work that must be reviewed by its author before anyone else sees itReasonable default: everything. The person who used the tool owns every word as if they wrote it.__________________________________________________________________________
AI-assisted work that needs a second human before it reaches families or records__________________________________________________________________________
5. When you’re not sure, ask
The person who answers AI questions hereName: ______________________ Where to find them: ______________________
What happens when something goes wrongWho you tell, and the promise that telling early is safe. A boundary nobody dares report against is a boundary that fails silently.__________________________________________________________________________
6. Sign it, date it, revisit it
Adopted by______________________ on: ____________ Review date: ____________
What would make us update this page soonerA new tool, a new program rule, an incident, or a staff question the page couldn’t answer.__________________________________________________________________________
A boundary, stated plainlyThis one-pager structures a staff agreement. It is not a legal document, it does not replace board policy, and it makes no decision about any student or staff member. Check it against your policy and your qualified counsel’s guidance, then let it do its real job: being the page people actually remember.
From The Library at School Systems Lab. If your team wants help turning this page into working practice, that’s the Lab’s staff AI readiness work. Free to use and share within your school. © Leading Bright Scholars, Inc., d/b/a School Systems Lab.
Once this is on the wall
A one-pager is the start, not the policy.
- Approve the tools before you write the never list. Library No. 05, the AI tool vetting checklist and register, is the twelve-question review; Library No. 06, the generator-to-plan handoff, is the teacher habit that follows.
- The reasoning behind these boundaries, with the U.S. Department of Education and UNESCO sources, is in Brief No. 01, AI governance begins with a decision.
- For the version you can put on a leadership agenda, read a practical AI governance agenda for school leaders.
- To take a team from wary to fluent on the AI your own policy allows, that is staff AI readiness advisory. On the software side, no AI reads a student record in any ClearPath product, and the data page says so in plain language.
The rest of the shelf is in the free Library.