Peoria Public Schools District 150 Superintendent Sharon Desmoulin-Kherat said artificial intelligence in the classroom is inevitable but Peoria schools don't have a plan for it yet.
"I do not consider it cheating," she said. "I think it makes us a little bit more efficient and effective. I use it a lot as a thought partner."
Kherat said AI was one of the biggest projects she never got to in her 11 years leading Peoria Public Schools, and one she hopes her successor tackles head-on.
Her last day is June 30. Jerry Bell takes over July 1.
"We understand it's part of this ecosystem now, and we want to get in front of it and manage it so that it works for us," she said of what she hopes comes next.
"AI, if I continued, it would have been a huge project," she added. "It was on my radar and on my to-do list."
She said the district already has a foothold. About two years ago, she worked with the teachers union after surveys showed educators were struggling with workload and morale. The solution was an AI-powered lesson planning platform that she said has been widely adopted.
"It's kind of like a little assistant, a lesson plan assistant. It's all about giving them some time back so they can spend it with their families, but still getting high-quality, personalized products."
But she acknowledges the district doesn't yet have a formal policy or framework for AI use by students. She said the work needs to start locally, drawing a comparison to how the district handled cell phone policy before the state weighed in.
"When everything is said and done, it's all local, it's locally driven," she said. "We need to sort of start working on it on our own — formalizing it and acknowledging it."
She envisions a committee of students, parents, staff and community members building that framework together, and said she hopes Bell picks up the project.
Accomplishments
Beyond AI, Kherat said she is leaving a district that looks very different from the one she inherited. When she arrived in 2015, she was met with a $14 million deficit and a high rate of vacant teaching positions. Since then, she said the district has raised its graduation rate, reduced chronic absenteeism and driven teacher retention from 78% to nearly 89%.
She said when she ran 11 years ago, "I did not expect the $14 million deficit. I did not even know that we had over 100 teacher vacancies." She added, "But for me, those things are opportunities. I don't look at them as problems."
She said the lesson she most wants to pass on to Bell is simple,
"Lead with humility, listen more than you speak," she said. "Never forget that every decision ultimately impacts children. This work is really about children."
Kherat said she plans to stay in Peoria in retirement. She's already booked travel and has home improvement projects lined up, and has not ruled out taking on new work in the fall.
"Retirement for me, it's not an ending; it's just a transition," she said. "I'm stepping away from a full-time superintendency, but I'm not stepping away from service at all."
