By Garrick Moritz, Gazette
The Garretson School Board met in regular session on May 8th. The District was moving into end of the year round-up activities, and talked about the future, with Chat GPT, new electric busses and E-sports on the horizon.
The board approved the payment of current bills and approved the current list of certified staff contracts.
Superintendent Guy Johnson and Business Manager Jacob Schweitzer discussed the preliminary budget for Fiscal Year 2024 and the board voted to schedule the budget hearing for 6 p.m. during the July meeting of the board.
The board then had to fill out their South Dakota High School Activities Association ballot. Supt. Johnson recommended that the board vote yes on all the items up for debate as they were good changes to policy. He then recommended that the board cast their ballot for the Dell Rapids Supt. for the open seat on the board of directors, as that candidate had the closest ties to our district. The board voted as such.
The policy committee was drafting new language to include for a job description for an American Sign Language interpreter/tutor, as the board had agreed to hire someone for that task and it was new territory for district personnel. Then both MS/HS and Elementary principals proposed changes to their student handbooks for next year.
MS/HS Principal Chris McGregor had an interesting bit to add to the "fair academic standards and cheating" section of his handbook.
“With Chat GPT and other AI learning software, I wanted it codified that using such tools to complete writing or math assignments counts as a bad faith practice just like plagiarism,” he said.
Board member Tana Clark had no idea what Chat GPT was, and like her, for our readers who haven’t heard what it is, a brief explanation is warranted. Chat GPT is a predictive language tool and computer algorithm that can create blocks of text using data that’s publicly available on the internet and based on whatever source materials the user feeds into it. It’s not true Artificial Intelligence, but it can write a pretty passible document with only a few clicks of the button. Depending on the source materials, it often gets details wrong or has inaccuracies that no human would make, but the technology is getting more accurate by the minute. Students, being digital-world savvy as they are, could feed these tools data and get a pre-written paper courtesy of a digital robot to turn in as homework. Obviously, Mr. McGregor wanted school rules in place to equivocate using Cchat GPT for school work with the same regard as if they’d copied a friend’s paper or had someone else write it for them. The board agreed that this was a good call.
During his report Mr. McGregor also commended FFA instructor Alysha Kientopf for receiving the 2023 SDAAE Outstanding Early Teacher award, for which she was honored at the FFA banquet.
Elementary Principal Katie Hoekman spoke about the unpaid meal policies, and during her report, gave the board a comprehensive review of the curriculum updates in math and English for the elementary.
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