BDI / 08 · FAQ
The questions every district asks first.
Honest answers to what superintendents, principals, and provosts ask us before an engagement — cost, timelines, data, and whether any of this replaces teachers.
Honest answers to what superintendents, principals, and provosts ask us before an engagement — cost, timelines, data, and whether any of this replaces teachers.
No, and we'd say that even if it cost us the engagement. The tools draft, summarize, and differentiate; they don't build relationships, read a room, or decide what a specific child needs on a specific morning. Our entire training model treats AI as time returned to teachers — planning, feedback, and paperwork hours coming back — not as headcount replacement. Districts that frame it that way to staff get adoption. Districts that stay silent get fear.
It depends on scope, so we won't pretend a single number is honest. A single PD day is priced like a single PD day; a semester-long cohort with coaching costs more; a multi-year district partnership is scoped against your size and goals. What we can promise: a written quote after one conversation, no charge for that conversation, and no engagement we don't think will show measurable results — because we set the success measures with you up front.
Teachers leave a first workshop with things they use the same week — that part is fast. Building-level change takes a semester of cohort work. District-level policy plus training plus measurable adoption is realistically a school year. Anyone who promises district transformation from a single in-service day is selling you the in-service day.
In our training work: nothing, because we don't take it. Our workshops and coaching don't require access to student records. When we help you evaluate AI vendors, we apply the standard we'd want applied to us — signed data-processing agreements, explicit no-model-training commitments, FERPA's school-official conditions, and your state's student privacy law on top. We wrote up the full standard in a field note you can read before ever talking to us.
It feels safer and measures worse. Students use the tools at home, staff use them quietly on personal accounts, and the district loses visibility into both — the shadow-use problem is the riskiest version of adoption. A grade-banded policy with an approved-tools list gives you actual control: sanctioned paths for staff, age-appropriate rules for students, and agreements protecting the data. Banning is a policy decision worth making deliberately, not by default.
Small districts are most of American education, and honestly, they move faster — fewer committees between a decision and a classroom. Cohort models scale down well, virtual delivery cuts the travel line, and a two-building district can pilot in one semester what a large system takes a year to approve. Tell us your size in the first conversation and we'll scope to it.
Yes — a small number at a time, by design. Seminaries face the same academic-integrity and curriculum questions as any campus, plus theological ones we take seriously rather than paper over. Details on the ministry page.
A conversation — thirty minutes, free, with Matthew, usually within a few days of your note. Come with whatever state you're in: a tabled policy draft, a board member asking hard questions, three enthusiastic teachers and no plan. We'll leave you with a practical next step whether or not you hire us. If you want homework first, the readiness checklist is the map of what that conversation covers.