The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), in partnership with Education First and StrategicEDU, has selected seven Washington districts to join a second phase of their Washington K-12 Innovation with AI Community of Practice: Ferndale School District, Highline Public Schools, Impact Public Schools, Kalama School District, Sequim School District, Summit Public Schools, and Yakima School District.
Each district will receive an innovation grant of up to $45,000 to pilot AI-enabled solutions to data system or operational challenges, building on the readiness work they completed earlier this year.
Most conversations about AI in K-12 schools focus on what’s happening in the classroom and the tools and programs that students and teachers interact with directly. But AI’s promise extends to the less visible work of untangling siloed systems, improving interoperability, and connecting scattered data on achievement, attendance, behavior, and student well-being to strengthen teaching and learning. These Washington districts are pioneering AI-enabled ways to connect and use data so educators and administrators can make better instructional decisions, while also protecting student privacy.
Over the course of this school year, each selected district team will receive customized coaching and capacity building from Education First and StrategicEDU, who bring insights from AI-implementation efforts from across the country. This ongoing support includes planning sessions, peer-to-peer learning, and access to tools and resources as the district teams implement their pilot projects over the next year.
Throughout the project, participating districts will develop and refine these approaches within their different contexts and document what works, what doesn’t, and what enables responsible and secure AI adoption within district data systems. CRPE will continue to study these processes in parallel, learning alongside the districts. With Education First and StrategicEDU, CRPE will surface challenges, indicators of success, and insights for the field, thereby elevating scalable models for other states and districts.
Findings from this initiative will shape state policy recommendations, readiness tools, and future AI investments, offering a model for how states, districts, funders, and partners can collaborate on sustainable AI strategies. This work is supported with grant funding from the Gates Foundation.
Join us for a webinar on Friday, September 18th, where we’ll share early lessons from the first phase of this work. Click here to register.
