HOUSTON — Houston ISD will become one of the first school districts in the country to use OpenAI’s new education-focused artificial intelligence tool to help manage its special education compliance — a high-stakes area where federal deadlines and privacy are critical and that HISD must improve under the state takeover.
HISD is joining about 15 school districts and charters nationwide to use “ChatGPT for Teachers” — the “first major offering built for K-12 classrooms,” according to the California-based artificial intelligence company with a reported valuation of $500 billion.
Also adopting the tool in Texas: Dallas and Humble ISDs and schools in the Rio Grande Valley region.
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This version of ChatGPT, where educators can enter queries or prompts to receive AI-generated responses, will be available to nearly 150,000 teachers and staff among these school systems, according to the company. The tool allows unlimited messages, web search, image generation and “ready-to-use prompts” for educators.
HISD Chief Technology Officer Kerri Holt told reporters that the district-controlled tool could streamline tasks related to individualized education programs while keeping student information secure, without replacing teachers.
“OpenAI helps us solve the problems that require deep reasoning and high-stakes accuracy, especially in our compliance-heavy areas like special education,” Holt said. “But equally important is security boundary around this work. It’s a private ‘walled garden’ instance where no student data is used to train external models. Our partnership is not about replacing teachers or automating classrooms. It’s about giving a large, complex district the computational power to operate with precision, reduce bureaucratic drag, and scale redesign work we’ve already begun.”
OpenAI’s vice president of education, Leah Belsky, said that the tool is free for school districts at least through June 2027.
Belsky said that the technology will be “secure and private” and compliant with federal privacy law around education. All information uploaded will be owned and controlled by the school districts. That data will only be accessible to the school district, she said.
“And, you know, for us, we’re on the very beginning of this journey to better serve both schools and teachers,” Belsky said when asked what benefit the deployment of this free tool for educators has for OpenAI. “We will continue making it accessible, hopefully as close to free as possible. And we’re still looking to figure that out. And we’ll figure that out as we also get feedback on the product with the district leaders,” she said.
HISD did not respond to questions on whether it received a potential cost estimate for continued use after June 2027 and what legal consultation it engaged before deciding to implement the new technology.
“Houston ISD approaches AI differently than most districts,” Holt said. “We’re not looking for a single tool or a single model. We’re building a federated, secure multi-engine AI architecture that strengthens the entire system of instruction, compliance, operations and planning.” Holt did not explain what she meant by a “multi-engine AI architecture.”
Holt said in addition to federal privacy rules for students, the district’s use will also comply with federal health-privacy laws. She said her message to parents is simple: “Your children’s status — protected. Period.”
“No student data is used to train external AI models,” Holt said. “Everything runs inside a secure, private district system. We don’t give any data to outside companies. We don’t use open, public AI tools with student information. Bottom line: your child’s information stays inside Houston ISD. It doesn’t train AI, and it doesn’t leave the district. But also, AI is not teaching your children. Teachers are. We’re not replacing teachers. We’re not experimenting on classrooms. Our instructional model is tight and structured and human-led. “
Holt said this tool could be “supplemental support” for developing individualized education programs, or IEPs, under special education federal law.
“It can also help a great deal with training,” Holt continued. “That’s one of the things that we’re considering it for. And also to manage — you know, we’re a very large district — to manage compliance and making sure that we follow our timelines precisely, and that sort of thing.”
HISD has to improve its compliance in special education in order to exit the state takeover. It recently reorganized its special education department under academics, cutting dozens of employees.
HISD did not respond to a question on whether it would devote employees to monitoring submitted queries and responses. It also did not respond to a question on whether school administrators would be able to access teachers’ queries, and the district did not respond to a question to define and explain what its teachers would use the tool for amid stringent reforms to uniformly deliver instruction.
Holt said that ChatGPT is easy to use and “a conversation that our teachers can have and get really great feedback.”
“We can set it up so that … the parts of the prompts are already written. So that it’s giving the model some very specific instructions on how to answer,” she said. “We feel that that is a huge advantage.”
HISD already uses artificial intelligence in the classroom, including AI-generated passages by the company Prof Jim Inc.; AI-supported reading practice by Amira; and daily learning materials. HISD has not provided a Prof Jim contract to the Houston Chronicle, and it did not answer questions for this article about who is paying for Prof Jim and how much. The district has no recent direct payments to Prof Jim, according to vendor payment records.
For students, the district introduced a new “Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence” elective in 2024. About 3,700 high school students were scheduled to take the course in the 2024-25 school year, according to HISD.
State-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles said in a September podcast that the teaching profession is not keeping up with AI development.
“I think people will recognize that we’re behind, and I think they will let districts do what districts need to do,” Miles said. “And superintendents will encourage responsible use of AI and find ways to make teachers’ work easier because of AI.”
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