Lake Houston - Humble - Kingwood Edition | March 2026

Education

BY WESLEY GARDNER

Humble ISD trustees approve pilot AI program for teachers

Humble ISD trustees approved a pilot program for K-12 educators to use OpenAI’s articial intelligence tool ChatGPT at the Feb. 17 board meeting. The details HISD Chief Financial Ocer Billy Beattie said the AI program will be used to help teachers and sta with a variety of tasks, including: • Creating discussion prompts • Developing study guides • Drafting emails • Analyzing student data “It’s really not so much a question of should we use AI, but it’s really about how do we responsibly and safely utilize AI for the benet of our students,” Beattie said. A closer look Beattie said the program should be able to save sta time with tasks, such as analyzing student

attendance reports. “I can only imagine the time and e ort it takes for a lot of those tasks,” Beattie said. “Whereas, if you had a safe and secure environment, you could plug that into ChatGPT and let it do all the analysis in 30 seconds.” According to OpenAI’s website, the program is also capable of personalizing teacher support based on grade level, curriculum and preferred teaching styles. Beattie also noted the data involved would not be shared with other districts and would not be used by OpenAI to train its own AI models. “Our data is inside our workspace and isolated in our workspace, so there’s no outside learning on our data,” Beattie said. “Our data is safe and secure.” What’s next Beattie said sta will soon begin training on AI literacy and ethics, designing instructional plans, and streamlining planning and workow.

Driving innovation Humble ISD is part of OpenAI’s rst cohort of schools testing its new ChatGPT pilot program for educators. Only three other entities in Texas are in the cohort, including:

Humble ISD Houston ISD Dallas ISD Region One Education Service Center

SOURCE: OPENAICOMMUNITY IMPACT

Beattie noted the district will test the software until 2027, when OpenAI will stop o ering the program for free. After the trial period ends, Beattie said the district will decide whether it will pay for the program moving forward or opt to try programs from other AI developers.

HOUSTON’S HEALTHCARE SAFETY NET FOR 60 YEARS.

COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM