Peninsula School District AI

Here are the ten most impressive things Peninsula School District (Gig Harbor, WA) is doing with AI, based on their website at psd401.ai

1. It built its own AI platform for every staff member and student. AI Studio gives everyone access to frontier AI models behind district sign-in. The district says it costs about a tenth of what per-seat licenses would.
2. Every staff member gets a personal AI agent. PSD AI Agents each have their own district Google account and work on their owner's behalf in Google Chat.
3. It runs an "Open Adaptive District" protocol. Teams of 3–6 staff pick one problem and spend six weeks building and using one solution. They then publish the results and decide whether to keep it, stop it, or run it again. The first teams started in fall 2026: the cabinet, principals, athletics, student services, curriculum, and career and technical education (CTE).
4. It publishes its failures too. Builds that get stopped are posted alongside the ones that worked, so other districts can learn from both.
5. It starts with adult work. AI is applied to staff tasks first "so the early mistakes don't land on students." The agents are kept out of evaluations, discipline, and anything personal.
6. LessonLens gives teachers private AI coaching. Teachers record a lesson and get AI feedback on specific teaching techniques. Administrators and evaluators can't see it, so it's for growth, not evaluation.
7. It builds its own software for district operations. The district built its own emergency operations and notification system (PSD EOC) and a public records request system. In the records system, Washington's legal deadlines and exemptions are "enforced in code rather than by policy."
8. Everything is open source and free to reuse. All seven of its software products, plus its guidance documents, are open for other districts to adapt (licensed CC BY-NC-SA). It even published a technical guide to fine-tuning a small AI model on district data.
9. It has clear guidance for staff and students. This includes a four-level data-security framework for AI tools and AI Principles and Beliefs, which say AI supports teachers rather than replacing them and encourage educators to override AI when their judgment says so. It also provides student handbook language and sample syllabus language for teachers.
10. Its teachers do real classroom work with AI and get recognized for it. Three teachers were selected for the Google AI + Education Fellowship, and teachers visited Stanford's AI Tinkery. Staff write about real uses: HeyGen giving a language learner a voice, ChatGPT helping with special education accommodations, and AI feedback that increases student thinking. The district was also featured in a national K-12 magazine.