The essay is due tomorrow, the Google Doc is empty and no organizer has been created.

When presented with this situation, thousands of students turn to the capabilities of generative artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence, commonly abbreviated as AI, has seen a drastic increase in both capability and use in the past five years.

District leadership is working with the school community to address the academic and ethical concerns brought by student usage of artificial intelligence.

Superintendent Robert Bryson identified teacher training to be one of the most important aspects of handling the increasing use of artificial intelligence.

“There’s staff development… because if they don’t know what it is or what it does or how it works, then they’re utilizing it kind of rogue-ly, which is where many districts were and are,” Bryson said.

Several of the district’s teachers, such as English teacher Tim Groth, have used artificial intelligence resources already to support student learning where it may be harder to provide.

“I’ve used it already once this year with my seniors,” Groth said. “… to help them proofread their essays, and then because they were writing about some personally sensitive topics, it made more sense to utilize artificial intelligence for proofreading rather than doing peer editing.”

While there are benefits to many of the artificial intelligence tools designed for education, students have also used the tools to complete work without applying or gaining their own thinking. Writing assignments are illegally completed through chat-based generative artificial intelligence programs, such as ChatGPT or Gemini.

“I used to teach the English 12 online course, and I would very frequently have to go through and use different artificial intelligence checkers to identify when student work was generated entirely through AI,” Groth said. “It’s generally really easy to see when a student uses AI because the wording and the diction and the tone and the overall structure of the writing just simply doesn’t match their usual work.”

Student misuse of artificial intelligence resulted in the formation of a committee to create a new artificial intelligence philosophy for the district. The committee consisted of several different perspectives, including those from administration, teachers and parents. Biology teacher Tyler Stipcak is a member of the committee.

“It was definitely a concern to have a policy that allows use of AI in a way that helps,” Stipcak said. “We want to maximize the positive potential uses of it while trying to minimize the really big negatives that we see of the misuse, academic dishonesty, plagiarism, that type of stuff that really is heavy towards the generative side of AI.”

Many of the artificial intelligence programs that students have used in the past contain clauses within their terms and services that require users to be 13 years of age or older and have parent or legal guardian permission to use the Services, such as in ChatGPT’s Terms of Service.

For students to access artificial intelligence resources, parent permission will soon be needed. This will change how some teachers use artificial intelligence, partially due to concerns over students actually completing the new paperwork.

“…we’ve seen with some recent surveys [such as the Pennsylvania Youth Survey] that were conducted that a lot of students just simply didn’t participate because they did not get the necessary paperwork signed,” Groth said. “I think that’s probably going to decrease the number of students [accessing artificial intelligence resources].”

The board of directors has also established a new policy regarding artificial intelligence in the classroom. In this policy, the consequences for artificial intelligence misuse are outlined for students as well as staff. Students will be allowed to use artificial intelligence within the parameters set by teachers.

“The use of Generative AI by students to complete assignments or assessments shall only be allowed to the extent stated and outlined by the teacher for the individual assignment or course,” the policy states. “Students shall be notified in advance of the parameters for use of Generative AI in assignments and assessments.”

If students do not use artificial intelligence within the parameters set by teachers, serious consequences can be enforced, up to the loss of computer access.

“Failure to comply with this policy or district rules regarding appropriate use of Generative AI including, but not limited to, acceptable use of computer and network resources, shall result in usage restrictions, loss of access privileges, disciplinary action and/or referral to legal authorities,” the policy continues.

Bryson feels that the most important part of introducing artificial intelligence regulations is to preserve the development of students.

“We want students to be able to utilize tools to think critically at the risk of getting worse with your critical thinking,” Bryson said. “By the time you leave school at Susquehannock High School… we would want you to take an assignment and be able to say what’s appropriate and not appropriate use [of AI] without us giving you a green light, yellow light, because you’re not going to have that beyond high school.”