The Glen Cove School District will use an AI-powered platform called ThoughtExchange to gather community input for its next three-year strategic plan, Superintendent Alexa Doeschner announced at a board of education meeting this week.
The platform, provided by a company called Blueprint for Excellence, will open to all district residents in September - whether they have children in the schools or not. The board voted unanimously to move ahead with the project, which will also be open to district staff and students in middle and high school.
The project costs $17,000, Doeschner said. The district will pay for it by collapsing two existing memberships, so it won't add a new expense to the budget. The district will also receive aid from the Board of Cooperative Educational Services.
How the platform works
ThoughtExchange presents a single prompt to participants and allows people to respond more than once, Doeschner said. After the feedback is collected, the board will rank responses by priority. The district plans to introduce the platform to the community primarily through PTA meetings and open houses in September.
One board member suggested placing a QR code linking to the platform on board members' business cards to broaden reach.
Concerns about outsourcing
Before the vote, Trustees Brett Miller and Lia Leone raised questions about hiring an outside vendor for the work. Miller said starting the project by September would be "a lot of heavy lifting right now."
Doeschner said the board would face more work if it handled the process internally. Blueprint for Excellence will do the "heavy lifting," she said. The decision to use the platform came from earlier community conversations about creating a coherent plan for the next three years.
"We're responding to that request and also trying to, like Brett was saying, hear as many voices as possible while doing it using technology," Doeschner said.
Board President Meghan Lavine and Trustee Maria Elena Venuto were not present during the meeting.
Why this matters for educators
School leaders are increasingly turning to AI tools to gather and sort community feedback. For administrators, the Glen Cove example shows how these platforms can turn an open-ended input process into a ranked list of priorities - without adding staff hours or new budget lines. The trade-off, as the board's discussion shows, is deciding whether outsourcing that work to a vendor is worth the cost and the loss of direct control. Districts considering similar tools will need to weigh those factors against the promise of hearing from more voices, faster.
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