A protracted negotiation process between the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District and the unions representing its teachers and support staff finally concluded Monday when the district’s Board of Education voted unanimously to approve new contracts, retroactively covering last year.

The district and the unions have worked towards new contracts since spring 2025, in a process that ultimately involved a mediator after the groups reached an impasse on salary negotiations. The groups reached tentative agreement in August, but the contracts needed approval by union membership and by the district’s board before they could be finalized.

The previous contracts were effective from 2021-2024, but the unions approved a one-year extension through 2025.

The new contracts include raises — retroactive to last year and increasing further in 2027 — as well as improvements to benefits like sick leave and retirement.

Susanna Litwiniak, who helms the Kenai Peninsula Educational Support Association, called the final contract “the result of countless hours of work and collaboration and sometimes strife.” She said the membership of her union voted “overwhelmingly” in favor of the new agreement.

Rebecca Walker, president of the Kenai Peninsula Education Association, spoke similarly, saying only one member of her union voted against the contract, with 99.5% in favor.

“I’m looking forward to expending our energy elsewhere and making better things happen for the students and families in our district.”

Both contracts were approved unanimously by the board, though president Jason Tauriainen abstained from voting on the KPEA contract.

Tauriainen made a rare exception to allow union members in the room to applaud the action. 

“It was a long year,” board member Patti Truesdell said in support of the contracts. “Our teachers and our support staff deserve this — a good contract. I feel good that we did our due diligence … now we get out there and just have a good school year.”

District administration advances AI

The school board on Monday also approved a set of new policies that address the use of generative artificial intelligence tools in local schools.

The policies add AI chatbots and other websites that use AI tools to a list of media regulated by the district for communication between staff, students and parents. They say that inputting student data into a chatbot or AI tool would constitute revealing that data to a third party in violation of student records policy. They define AI as “an educational tool” that “shall not diminish the expectation that students demonstrate learning through their own efforts.”

“AI may support learning but shall not replace a student’s own thinking, reasoning, creativity or demonstration of knowledge,” one policy reads.

Generative artificial intelligence, as it’s come to be called, largely refers to a suite of technologies built on large language models that create outputs from massive datasets in response to prompts from users. Those outputs can come in many forms, including text, documents, images and sometimes videos.

The responses are based on and extrapolated from content that the models have been trained on, though often without citation, and many models have been documented to sometimes “hallucinate” or provide inaccurate or entirely fabricated responses.

Generative AI tools have been integrated into many familiar programs and websites, including social media, search engines and other software like email or word processors.

KPBSD Superintendent Clayton Holland has previously said that the district uses two generative AI technologies designed for use in education, a specially licensed version of Google’s Gemini and MagicSchool.

The board on Monday heard a presentation by Amanda Adams, the district’s virtual learning and professional development coordinator, on the district’s approach to AI. She likened AI to new mediums of content distribution like Blockbuster for videos in the 1980s or Napster for audio in the aughts. Those things were then supplanted by further innovations like Apple Music or Disney+. She said that AI creates “disruptive innovation.”

The district’s guidelines, Adams said, are that AI doesn’t replace human labor, judgment or creativity; “only enhance.” She said students, families and staff need to know when AI is being used and how.

The district has been working for years to introduce AI into classrooms, Adams said, a process that took a major step forward with the approval of the new board policy this year. Adams said teachers and administrators are being trained to use AI, and that the district is discouraging efforts to “police” the technology.

District students will also be trained in “basic AI literacy,” Adams said. That includes exploring possible uses, recognizing that the technology may “hallucinate” incorrect or entirely fabricated information and learning how to disclose use.

“Even the best of AIs, they’re just computer programming,” Adams said. “There’s nothing living behind there that’s going to make a decision for them.”

Mica VanBuskirk, who represents the eastern peninsula on the board, asked about other nations and states who are barring the use of generative AI in youths — she cited Norway, France, New York and California. She said those governments are pointing to studies that indicate students and people regularly using AI tools are less cognitively engaged, don’t retain information and aren’t challenged to engage with problems.

Adams said that barring AI would be like rejecting innovation, but also said she’s not advocating for the use of AI.

“These kids, the moment that they walk out of those buildings, AI is deeply invested in every part of their world, and it will be in their workplaces as well,” she said. “Are we better off trying to balance instruction — train kids how to use something — versus acting as if it’s not going to be part of their world?”