Balancing Budgets and Innovation: How Schools Are Adapting to AI and Technology Shifts
As pandemic-era federal funding ends and budgets tighten, K–12 leaders are rethinking how to manage costs—including the technology provided to students. At the same time, schools are rapidly moving toward the widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in classrooms. This shift raises key questions: How can schools use AI effectively while protecting student safety, privacy, and limited budgets?
To explore these issues, AIR developed this whitepaper examining how schools distribute and manage student devices—like laptops and tablets—and how those strategies have evolved over time.
During the pandemic, emergency funding allowed most districts to adopt one-to-one device models, giving every student their own device. With that funding now gone, many schools are reassessing their approach and returning to shared device setups, such as computer labs or mobile carts.
While one-to-one models make it easier for students to access personalized AI-driven learning tools, shared or hybrid approaches can also enable meaningful, collaborative uses of AI. As schools adapt, these shifts present new opportunities to design AI tools that support diverse ways of teaching and learning.
