1. Could we use surveys from other districts to find communication themes?

Definitely! Just make sure you have permission to use the other district’s data. That’s part of the reason I shared what New York City public school parents and staff were saying about AI. I think you can gain a lot of valuable insights by looking at different data sources.

Use those findings to build your own inquiry, but don’t let them replace listening to your own community or lead you to assume your families feel the same way.

2. What should communicators do when supervisors want AI to do the creative work for them?

I think it's an interesting question because it can read two ways: how do I protect my role, or how do I push back when AI is being used badly?

If it's about protecting your role, it's hard to build an argument around AI not being good at writing or designing because, truthfully, it is. It can produce useful work. But your role is a lot more than just producing. Understanding your community, deciding what needs to be communicated and how, anticipating how it might land, and knowing when to change course are all important parts of the work too.

In K-12, with students, there's more of a push towards making learning visible right now, and that may be something we need to move towards as communicators. We might need to explain why we chose an approach, what else we considered, and what we changed because often people don't understand all that goes into communications work. They only see a finished flyer or paragraph and think AI can do that easily: "You should just do that and save time." They don't necessarily see the expertise that went into it.

If it's about pushing back on poor AI use, it might be worth having a conversation about what the actual goal is. What are we trying to accomplish? And is creating an AI flyer and distributing it actually helping? What are the actual concerns? Is it about time? Is it about accuracy? Is it about audience fit, accessibility, or privacy? Deconstructing that might help us better figure out a way to get what they want without damaging public trust in the meantime, because sometimes AI really will make the work better or faster, but sometimes it just creates more work for you: checking and rewriting and regenerating over and over and over because it isn't right the first time.

I think we need to be honest that both things can be true. Making your expertise visible won't remove every pressure on your role, but it might give you a starting point for a much more useful conversation to have with your supervisor.

3. How do we fix off-brand AI flyers made by principals, coaches and staff?

As we discussed in the session, this is a governance issue. There need to be clear expectations about who can create and publish materials representing the district, how the brand is used, and what needs review. Staff also need an easy way to follow those expectations.

It may help to bring leaders into the conversation about how people are responding to AI-generated flyers. This 404 Media article shares examples of public backlash that could be useful to discuss. It doesn't tell us how your own families feel, but it raises a worthwhile question: what might these materials communicate about the care and effort we're putting into our relationship with them?

That could be a useful starting point for agreeing on some rules together.

Read the 404 Media article ↗

4. How can AI account for families who didn't respond to a survey?

AI can help you think through whose voices might be missing and why. You could ask it to interview you, one question at a time, about who you hoped to hear from, how you invited them, who responded, and what barriers people might have faced. Then use that conversation to identify better ways to reach them.

Treat those explanations as possibilities to check. AI can help you plan how to listen, but it can't tell you what families who didn't respond would have said.

5. How do we pay for AI tools when district purchasing, co-op and vendor processes are a barrier?

My first question would be: do you need to buy another tool? Start by checking what's already available and approved through your district's Microsoft or Google accounts. Before paying for something new, see whether the version of Copilot or Gemini you have can do what you're trying to do.

If there's a specific tool that fills a genuine gap, put together a professional proposal. Explain what you want to try, how you'd use it responsibly, what information it would need, and how you'd know it helped. Before proposing a pilot, ask IT or procurement what would make it possible, including whether the vendor can invoice the district instead of requiring a personal credit card. Offer to run a three-month pilot, with district approval, and report your findings. That could be a good opportunity to help the district learn too.

If it's a creativity tool you'd genuinely use in your personal life, you might choose to pay for it yourself. Keep private school data out of it, and remember that paying personally doesn't replace district approval for work use.