New leader meeting the challenges
LENOX PUBLIC SCHOOLS
BY CLARENCE FANTO
The Berkshire Eagle
LENOX — How can a local school district put up guardrails against abuse of artificial intelligence by students seeking short cuts, especially for essay writing?
That’s one of the issues top of mind for William Collins, approaching his one-year anniversary as superintendent of the Lenox Public Schools.
Other priorities include reducing chronic absenteeism— 28.6 percent of Morris Elementary students and 12.6 percent of Lenox Memorial Middle and High students missed 18 days or more of school in 2022-23.
Collins told The Eagle during a wide-ranging conversation on Tuesday that he’s also tracking the School Committee’s visioning retreats focusing on inclusivity and belonging for all students.
That effort follows outbreaks of bullying in 2022 leading to an audit by an outside law firm prior to Collins’ arrival last June and the appearance last April 28 of a Nazi swastika symbol and a homophobic slur that mentioned a student’s name in a boys bathroom at Lenox Memorial Middle and High.
The use of AI through the ChatGPT app is spreading nationally — about one in five U.S. teens who know about it have used it for schoolwork, according to recent findings by the Pew Research Center. About 25 percent of 11th and 12th graders familiar with it have tried it, the survey reported.
The high-tech shortcut enables users to create essays masquerading as a student’s homework product.
“Like any other tool, there are so many beneficial things to AI,” Collins said. “But can it be used inappropriately? Absolutely, this is the double-edged sword. What we don’t want to do is throw away the good just because there’s the opportunity for abuse.”
The school is figuring out a way to add a “robust introductory tech course for interested high school students,” Collins said.
As for guardrails, Collins noted that he and middle/ high school Principal Jeremiah Ames came away from a conference with the understanding that at least for now, ChatGPT can’t duplicate a student’s in-depth writing and teachers can identify an AI essay.
“But we do struggle with it,” Collins acknowledged, “and I don’t know that we have a concrete answer to it. Educators have some real concerns, when does this get to the point where it can easily fool us.”
Excerpts from The Eagle’s conversation with Collins on other topics follow, lightly edited for space:
THE EAGLE: How do you confront post-pandemic chronic absentee rates, especially in the elementary school?
COLLINS: COVID changed the rules and the importance of physically being in the school space. Morris was 28 percent chronically absent in 2022-23, and 12 percent at LMMHS. I co-signed and sent a letter home from state education Commissioner Jeff Riley, now retired. The state is going to put more weight on chronic absenteeism [when it evaluates districts], so even though academically we do very well, they’re going the change the way they do their accountability, so chronic absenteeism is going to ding us, and we’re not going to have the same rating.
I’ve been working with the principals, asking them to provide the cause. We have an awful lot of family vacations because it’s more pricey to go during February or April break, so a family will go the week before or afterward to avoid that cost.
But it makes continuity difficult for teachers.
THE EAGLE: Have students in the Lenox district recovered academically from the effects of the pandemic?
COLLINS: There are benefits and disadvantages to being a small district. One benefit is that we can be very responsive to individual students. We can post for a tutor to be on hand to help students and we have software designed just to help students. We’re small enough to identify the few students and laser-focus an approach for them. We’re in a good place, back to the pre-COVID level footing but if the pandemic hadn’t happened, we would have continued to progress. We’ve lost potential gains. And attendance is part and parcel of that. If you miss in-person time in school with the teacher, it’s hard to make up for that.
THE EAGLE: What priorities have emerged from retreats devoted to instilling a feeling of districtwide “belongingness” for the future?
COLLINS: The state’s education department is doing this; we’re one of a handful of districts piloting embedding inclusivity in everything we do. We’ve had Phil Fogelman from the Anti- Defamation League as presenter to the School Commit-tee as well as to administrators, staff and students. The training involves all forms of discrimination. Now it’s about core values for the School Committee.
DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) in the kind of world we live in now is charged, politicized. So I have been using the vocabulary that we can all agree that we want students to feel they belong, regardless of racial identity, religious beliefs, gender identity or if they’re just “geeky kids.” My vision is for Lenox to be known for being a beacon of belongingness, that you can come here, regardless of who you are, you’re going to be accepted. And that’s where the best learning takes place, for staff and families as well. So everyone knows that we’re people-centered, to be in a brave space to be able to learn, and not worry about being teased or harassed.
The bullying and swastika incidents were symptoms, but we need to get at the root cause, having a culture so that if someone is being bullied, the community would say, “That’s not cool, that’s not who we are.” And we’re also looking to diversify our staff. That makes us stronger as a school community.
Clarence Fanto can be reached at cfanto@yahoo.com.