Ethics, academic honesty to guide AI use in Napa Valley Unified schools, board says

Beth Schlanker /The Press Democrat The Napa Valley Unified school board adopted an Artificial Intelligence policy on March 26. (Beth Schlanker /The Press Democrat) By Tarini Mehta | tarini.mehta@pressdemocrat.com | The Press DemocratPUBLISHED: April 1, 2026 at 5:45 PM PDT Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...As educational institutions grapple with the entry of artificial intelligence into learning spaces, Napa Valley Unified will allow its use under a policy that emphasizes ethics, equity and academic honesty. The school board voted 5-1 to approve the policy with President Lisa Chu absent at its meeting Thursday, March 26. Trustee Cindy Watter cast the dissenting vote. “I’m worried this is going to encourage students to cut corners,” Watter, a former teacher, said. “We have to do something to make children realize that anything they can come up with is probably going to be more interesting for me to read than something that was scraped off something that somebody else wrote.” Trustee John Henry Martin, a teacher at a Vallejo school, commended the district for “getting ahead of the curve” by putting a policy in place. “This is simply the beginning of a framework of how we’re going to use this technology in the classroom,” he said. “It’s important to not be afraid of this technology because we can leverage it to be so much more productive when we do it conscientiously.” The board-approved policy recognizes the “transformative potential” of artificial intelligence to “i...