{"id":287958,"date":"2026-05-28T19:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T19:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/287958\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T19:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T19:48:08","slug":"broward-schools-create-teen-ai-experts-to-keep-kids-engaged-in-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/287958\/","title":{"rendered":"Broward schools create teen AI experts to keep kids engaged in learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Broward County School District is going all in on teaching artificial intelligence, betting that the new technology will encourage families to stay in the public system.<\/p>\n

Five schools will get elective AI programs in the next academic year, said Keyla Concepcion, a school district spokeswoman. In addition, three Nova schools in Davie are scheduled to begin classes in the 2027-28 year, complementing existing programs at Nova High, South Plantation High, Glades Middle in Miramar and Dillard High 6-12 in Fort Lauderdale.<\/p>\n

The expansion plans are part of multiple initiatives designed to tackle 15 years of decreasing enrollment<\/a>, which has left the district with more than 50,000 empty seats. The decline started with the surge of charter schools more than 20 years ago, but officials now also\u00a0attribute the falloff to dwindling birth rates, the growth of private school vouchers and immigration issues.<\/p>\n

As they brainstormed ways to keep families interested in public education, officials decided to embrace the enthusiasm of students such as Miguel Niebles, a senior at Nova High\u2019s AI Academy, who has given some thought to AI in contemporary American life.<\/p>\n

Niebles said he and his peers are aware AI can be used to cheat on exams or mislead with false information. He has friends who are wary of the technology; as artists, they are concerned their work can be copied and manipulated without their permission. But he tries to show them AI\u2019s benefits while acknowledging its deficiencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can use it to tutor, you can use it to practice for tests,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just to replace us but to empower us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many grownups are skeptical of AI. A 2025 Pew Research Center<\/a> survey found half of American adults are \u201cmore concerned than excited\u201d about its growing presence in daily life. Teenagers, on the other hand, are welcoming this new digital world: Pew found more than half of teens have used AI to find information, help with homework and have fun.<\/p>\n

At Nova High, students are using their AI skills to help the public with a problem they often encounter: navigating the Broward school district\u2019s website, which often requires multiple clicks to get to a desired page. The project is one of several undertaken by the second-year class at the school\u2019s AI Academy, which is teaching 60 students this technology of the future.<\/p>\n

\"AA student works on a redesign of the school courtyard at Nova High School in Davie. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n

Academy students surveyed parents and young people and compiled a list of the most common challenges they face maneuvering through browardschools.com<\/a>\u2018s 10,000 pages. Among the repeat issues: how to email school staff; how to report an absence; and how to locate each school\u2019s online store, calendar, parking decal forms, summer assignments and clubs.<\/p>\n

Seeing how many clicks are needed to find an after-school club, senior Jan-Carlos Reyes Santana, 18, designed a user-friendly chatbot so each club can be accessed through the district\u2019s main landing page by posing a simple demand, such as \u201cTake me to the Nova High chess club.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senior Sofia Mazumdar is working on a virtual assistant for the website that examines transcripts and details whether students are on track to graduate.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people are kind of lost\u201d when it comes to figuring out if they can graduate on time, said Mazumdar, 18. \u201cBut if you upload your transcript, this will tell you what you need.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SofiaSofia Mazumdar discusses her work in class at Nova High School on Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Mike Stocker\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n

The work of these future AI experts will soon be online for all to see: Their chatbots are expected to be available to users for the school year that begins in August.<\/p>\n

Nova High students are using their AI skills not only to help the district\u2019s website. Alani Parhm, 17, built a self-tutoring schedule to help her study for an anatomy exam. Valentino Constant, 16, proposed a new design for the school\u2019s courtyard, winning a contest initiated by Principal Olayemi Awofadeju.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe students are pushing us, and that\u2019s good,\u201d said Manuel Castaneda, the school district\u2019s executive director of enterprise analytics and intelligence. \u201cThey\u2019re showing us how we can learn from them as much as they can learn from us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Broward County School District is going all in on teaching artificial intelligence, betting that the new technology…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[506,19412,113,28,249,251,250,114,266,115,109,32797],"class_list":["post-287958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-broward-county","tag-davie","tag-education","tag-florida","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-social","tag-south-florida-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}