When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) technology and its impact on students, Wilton Public Schools Director of Digital Learning William Antonitis told the Board of Education that educators need to learn from the mistakes that were made around cellphones and social media usage.
“Fifteen, 20 years ago, when cellphones came into prominence, it took us a while to catch up with that,” he said. “[Now], we have books like The Anxious Generation, and we have cellphone bans and people trying to de-screen…. As educators, we were a little bit behind the ball, we didn’t talk about that with kids.”
Instead, Antonitis said, AI is something the schools must address head on, not avoid.
“With AI, we really can’t afford to be the ostrich with the head in the sand, and I don’t feel like anyone in this room is, and everybody’s been really encouraging with what we’ve been doing, hence the update,” Antonitis said.
At Thursday night’s (Mar. 5) BOE meeting, Antonitis and Matt Mervis, Director of Skills21 and AI Strategy at EdAdvance, gave an update to the Board of Education about how the Wilton school district is preparing its students for success in the future in the face of technological developments including the use of AI.
Skills that students will need after school will be analytical thinking, creative thinking, technological literacy, AI and big data, according to the presentation.
Antonitis said it is through the school district’s AI Pilot Program, which has already resulted in an AI Policy adopted by the Board of Education as well as some AI tools being used in the classroom, that students will learn how to effectively use the technology, which will only help better prepare them for the future.
Students at Middlebrook School — through the Presidential AI Challenge — have created apps that address cyberbullying, women’s safety and waste management. Wilton High School Spanish students used AI to recreate an image their instructor gave them.
In the spring of 2025, School AI was selected as the primary AI tool, while Gemini and Notebook LM were most recently made available to Wilton High School students, Antonitis said. These tools are all compliant with FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) and COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act).
“And unlike what a lot of students have accessed kind of on their own, whether it be Character AI or ChatGPT, et cetera, these are much more safe, and they provide a lot of capability more focused on academics rather than recreation or creativity, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not necessarily what we want to promote in schools to try to keep kids learning about this stuff in a safe and effective way,” Antonitis said.
Suggesting that parents and educators need only remember their own experiences with cell phones, Antonitis recalled witnessing someone riding a motorcycle and texting at the same time.
“All I thought was this person has a death wish. It’s crazy.”
According to a 2025 national survey done by Project Tomorrow, a nonprofit dedicated to student learning, 54% of students in grades 6-12 report using technology outside of school to learn about subjects of interest to them.
Antonitis also highlighted a survey taken of Wilton teachers — 65.5% of 115 responses said they sometimes use AI to support their professional work, with another 12.1% saying they often do so. In addition, 53.7% of teachers, of 108 responses, said they sometimes use AI to support classroom teaching.
“So these are teachers who have reported they’re using AI with students and to help the students master AI tools, but also help to improve their skill development within those classes,” he said.
Mervis said Wilton is doing some good work on the issue of AI, adding that his team works with more than 100 districts throughout the state. He said that while there is a lot about AI that is positive, there are challenges, such as the dissemination of inaccurate information, the evolution of AI companionship and the potential for cheating.
Mervis acknowledged that cheating existed well before the advent of AI, but he said there should always be a discussion about the ethics of its use.
“There’s a fascinating guy named Victor Lee at Stanford University. He’s done studies of student cheating during the SparkNotes era, the CliffNotes era, the passing quizzes era, the SAT kids where there’s no AI access or figuring out ways. This is a persistent theme. AI is probably amplifying it,” he said.
But teachers have been finding ways to combat that, whether by having kids do activities in the classroom where they have to discuss their own projects completed at home, or noticing when a child uses vocabulary in an essay they don’t ordinarily use.
School AI will not allow a student to make it complete an assignment for them, according to Mervis. NotebookLM allows the teacher to customize it so it can guide the student without giving the answer to a question.
How much AI should be used is a question for the district and teachers to decide, he said. There can be three levels — from the lowest with no AI used to the top where AI is used extensively and intentionally. “So these are your guys’ framing for what the traffic light is inside a classroom.”
Mervis put the discussion in terms of how students will negotiate the future.
“This is where you want kids to be at some level because the kids who can use AI to solve novel problems in their community are the kids who are not going to have a problem navigating this labor market. If you look at what most companies are doing right now, they’re challenging employees to use AI in ways that help them punch above their weight class.”
Board Chair Ruth DeLuca said in a few years, the board may start discussing AI in terms of math and science.
Board member Pam Ely noted the constant evolution of the technology.
“The ground is shifting all the time, which makes uncertainty,” Ely said.
The AI Pilot Program timeline continues with creation of the WPS AI User Guide in the spring followed by curriculum integration for grades 6-9.