Right now, an active group of Bend-La Pine Schools parents, educators and educational experts are pressing the district to slow its roll on using artificial intelligence tools with students in the classroom. BLPS adopted a policy around AI last year, which outlines a few points on how teachers may use AI with students, but it’s lacking in detail and puts the onus on the teacher to develop rules and communicate expectations to students.
If this notion of having educators be the standard-bearers for a technology that has massive potential for disruption in the classroom seems eerily familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before.
It was not so very long ago that a movement arose to ban cell phone use during the school day in local schools. Many teachers advocated for a statewide policy that would help them enforce the rules and alleviate the issue of rules being enforced in one classroom and not another. Resolution came in the form of a governor’s executive order, banning widespread phone access during the school day.
Chat GPT was released just three years ago, and things moved fast. During the 20204-25 school year, 85% of teachers and 86% of students reported using AI, according to an October report released by the Center for Democracy and Technology.
That report outlines the heightened risks for students, including tech-enabled sexual harassment and bullying, AI systems that don’t work as intended, data breaches and ransomware attacks and “troubling interactions between students and technology.”
Another study published by The Brookings Institution in January found that at this point, “the risks of utilizing generative AI in children’s education overshadow its benefits.” That global study involved review of 400+ studies and consultations with over 500 students, parents, educators and technologists in 50 countries, finding that “AI-enriched learning” can offer benefits when part of an “overall pedagogically sound approach” – but also pointing out that “overreliance on AI tools and platforms can put children and youth’s fundamental learning capacity at risk.” Other studies have shown a potential for cognitive decline in humans due to the use of AI.
Educators meanwhile are finding benefit by using AI for admin tasks, such as grading, student records and lesson planning. In the best-case scenario, this frees them up to spend more time building relationships with students.
But when it comes to the youngest developing brains, a cautious approach should lead.
As was the case for the cell phone policy, perhaps this is an issue that is best moved up the chain — to the state level, where concentrated effort could be made to assess and recommend tools and processes that help keep kids safe and best equipped to make strides in learning.
If that sounds a bit too much like an abandonment of local control, well, in this case, so be it. As much as some districts may be ready and willing to embrace AI and invest in richer tools for the educational space, other districts simply won’t be able to.
“As schools continue to embrace AI, it’s important that underfunded districts in marginalized communities are not left behind, allowing AI to further drive inequity,” the Brookings Institution study stated.
Uneven rollout of technologies has the potential to exacerbate the urban-rural divide we already see in Oregon schools. That divide, as has been suggested in recent reporting by Oregon Journalism Project, may be one of the reasons for Oregon’s abysmally low graduation rates and reading scores.
“Oregon’s devotion to local control, instead of mandated statewide educational policies, has hindered reading recovery efforts that have worked elsewhere, according to some school leaders, experts, and advocates, and a review of education research,” OJP reported.
The state currently has some guidelines around the use of AI, but they have no real teeth.
As Oregonians begin to understand what’s gone wrong in the past to leave our kids so far behind their peers around the country, it’s clear we need to try something different. As that conversation gets going, it would be wise to incorporate targeted, measurable and meaningful technology policies to go along with it. A statewide consensus would help.
Editor’s note: This edition has been edited from the print edition, which mentioned the chatbot “Raina,” and BLPS’ purported lack of awareness that the chatbot had been removed from the district’s student online platform, Magic School, per reporting from OPB. According to BLPS on Feb. 18, the chatbot is still available, and “the only change made by Magic School was to replace the cartoon image of Raina (a little girl) with a cartoon image of a robot, and to name the tool ‘AI Learning Assistant’ rather than use a person’s name.”
This article appears in the Source February 19, 2026.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
The introduction of iPads — and the continued presence of cell phones in our schools despite policies stating they are not allowed, including at Summit High — has quietly hijacked our children’s brains.
I have been advocating against these devices in classrooms since my children were in third and fourth grade. They are now seniors. For nearly a decade, I have raised concerns in meetings, in conversations, and in letters. I warned that we were moving too fast, placing powerful technology in young hands without fully understanding the long-term developmental consequences.
Our children became the guinea pigs.
BLPS rolled out one-to-one devices with optimism, but without sufficient guardrails or long-term data on cognitive, emotional, and behavioral impact. Now we are living with the results: rising anxiety, depression, attention difficulties, behavioral challenges, and a generation of students who increasingly struggle to focus deeply or sustain intellectual curiosity. We see addiction patterns that mirror what researchers have long warned about regarding screens and dopamine-driven design.
Perhaps most troubling is this: many children have lost their love of learning.
School should cultivate curiosity, critical thinking, resilience, and joy in discovery. Instead, we have normalized distraction. We have replaced tactile learning, discussion, and real-world engagement with screens. Students toggle between tabs rather than wrestling with ideas. They consume rather than create.
When parents advocate persistently and respectfully for change, school systems should pause and take notice. My concerns — and the concerns of others — were often dismissed as resistance to progress. But this was never about rejecting technology outright. It was about thoughtful implementation, developmental readiness, and balance.
I have seen the contrast firsthand. My children within the BLPS system gradually disengaged from learning. Meanwhile, my child who had access to Cascades Academy experienced something very different: experiential learning, travel opportunities, hands-on exploration, and a curriculum that prepared him for the real world he is stepping into as a young adult. He remained engaged, curious, and motivated.
Technology has a place in education. But it cannot replace human connection, experiential learning, and the cognitive development that comes from sustained attention and real-world interaction.
We owe our children more than convenience and modernization. We owe them classrooms that protect their developing brains, nurture their curiosity, and prepare them not just to scroll — but to think.
It’s time to reassess But they doubled down this year with all new devices, cases, plugs and have the nerve to ask for insurance on devices that I as a parent disapprove but regardless are forced into my students hands. No thank you.