ETCN AI Roadmap

The AI Roadmap is finished. Here's what's in it and what it means for your classroom.  After a year of task force sessions, a staff retreat, and a whole lot of your feedback, the ETCN AI Roadmap is going to the Leadership Council. You can read the full draft now.
The short version: ETCN is not banning AI, and we are not leaving it wide open either. The roadmap recommends a middle path it calls Guided Integration — AI is allowed and encouraged when it supports learning or operations, guided by teacher expectations, program standards, privacy safeguards, and human review.

Read the full draft here: ETCN AI Roadmap v1.1 — Final Draft

How we got here: The ETCN AI Task Force built the roadmap— teachers, counselors, classified staff, school leaders, Palomar College, and business partners including Sharp Healthcare, the Poway Chamber of Commerce, and B2 Software. Across five sessions, we coded what stakeholders actually said, researched where each member district's AI policy currently stands, and reviewed the tools we already have. The retreat added another layer of staff voice, and v1.1 integrates that feedback directly.

A few of the sharper things you told us made it in unsoftened. Several members said flatly that AI has no role in counseling or student-facing advising — that language is now in the roadmap twice. Staff asked for an explicit assurance that AI is not a job-reduction strategy, rather than one merely implied. That's in there too, in writing: AI is intended to support staff capacity, not to replace teacher, counselor, or classified staff positions. And because members were split on how fast AI PD should move, the rollout is phased rather than mandatory.

What actually changes in your classroom: Five things, and none of them require a new tool.

• Say what you allow, assignment by assignment. The roadmap asks teachers to make AI expectations visible — AI allowed, AI limited, AI required, or AI prohibited — in the syllabus, the Canvas page, or the assignment instructions. It can differ from task to task. Students just need to know which one they're in.
• Final work stays the student's. Unless you've explicitly allowed something different, final submissions represent the student's own thinking and voice, and students should be able to explain their process in their own words.
• Assessments are AI-free unless you say otherwise. Quizzes, tests, credential assessments, clinical demonstrations, and hands-on competencies are completed without AI unless the assessment rules allow it.
• AI detectors are not evidence. This one is explicit: detection tools are not accurate enough to be the sole basis for a grade or a discipline decision. When you're concerned, the first move is a learning-centered check — a conference, an oral explanation, a supervised redo, a comparable in-person task.
• Keep confidential information out of public tools. No personally identifiable student information, health, disability, disciplinary, immigration, or financial details in public AI tools.

The tools stay the tools: The roadmap names Google Gemini, NotebookLM, and Canvas as ETCN's flagship AI tools, which means the tools you already have and already have PD on. Students keep their access to Gemini and NotebookLM — that's named in the roadmap as an equity strategy, not a perk. Tools like SchoolAI, Curipod, Snorkl, and Canvas AI features stay available where your district permits them and the use case is sound.

There is nothing new to buy and nothing new to learn here. If you've been to a Gemini or NotebookLM session, you're already in the flagship lane.

Where we're going next: The roadmap sets a three-phase arc, and we are in the middle of it right now:

• 2025–26 — Foundation. Council approves the direction, the minimum expectations, and the flagship tools. That's the vote in front of us.
• 2026–27 — Pilot. This year. The full implementation plan gets written, role-based PD gets built, student AI literacy launches, and we run small, low-risk, human-reviewed operational pilots — multilingual FAQs, program navigation, meeting summaries.
• 2027–28 — Scale. Keep what works, retire what doesn't, and fold the AI skills employers actually validate into CTE, ESL, and ASE.

An AI Roadmap Implementation Team will meet quarterly to turn the roadmap into the real plan and report to the Leadership Council annually. Thank you to everyone who completed the PD survey and Implementation Team interest form before the September 18 close — that input is shaping both the team roster and what PD looks like this spring. If you missed it and still want a seat at that table, email me and I'll add your name to the list.

On the PD side, AI professional learning is planned yearly and refreshed each semester, because the tools move faster than an annual workshop can. This winter's strand focuses on checking AI-generated material before students see it — practical, one hour at a time, with morning and evening options.

If you want help now: You don't have to wait for the implementation plan to start. Writing your assignment-level AI expectations takes about ten minutes once you've seen an example, and I'm happy to sit down and write them with you for your actual course — or to co-teach a lesson where students use Gemini or NotebookLM, and you watch how it goes before committing to anything.