Artificial intelligence is coming to Marion County Public Schools, and it starts with South Marion High School, opening in August.
The Florida Department of Education awarded a $260,000 grant to SMHS in October 2025 to support its artificial intelligence program. Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas, granted $40 million through the Workforce Development Capitalization Incentive Grant Program, Workforce CAP, to expand a focus on in-demand industries, such as artificial intelligence, in secondary schools across Florida.
Marion County’s Coordinator of the Career and Technical Education program, Katherine Otte, applied for the Artificial Intelligence Foundations Program grant in hopes of expanding the education of AI in Marion County in the upcoming school year. She said offering programs relating to artificial intelligence allows the county to remain “ahead of the game” and adequately prepare students for the workforce.
The desire for skills relating to AI does not come unfounded, as CBS reported the fastest growing job title on LinkedIn, a networking and job posting site, is “AI engineer.” Roles under this position include building and operating AI products, including large language models, LLMs, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“It’s [AI] impacted us in a way where we’re having to think about what tools we use, but also how we safely use them with students,” Otte said.
The Career and Technical Education program in Marion County provides 35 different curriculum categories, including programs relating to engineering, hospitality and agriculture. Otte said they plan on artificial intelligence being the 36th. The category will not be isolated and will impact different facets of the education provided by the CTE.
“A lot of what we're doing with our computer science courses, we'll also be doing with the AI courses,” Otte said. “Our teachers will be able to collaborate and bounce ideas off of each other, and do some lesson planning together, and things like that.”
“Ensuring students understand AI from a human-centered perspective is imperative to the development of the program in Marion County,” Logan Johnson, Coordinator of Digital Technology said.
“AI is only as powerful as the human intelligence behind it, and we're aware that we have to be future-ready when it comes to how to use the tools,” Johnson said. “But, we also need to stay grounded in that human work in it. Any outcome that comes from AI is the responsibility of the end user.”
Although AI is typically not allowed for assignments, students are already using it, Johnson said, and the importance of educating them in AI literacy is only increasing.
Johnson works to assist teachers and administrators in the implementation of AI in their curricula to enhance the district’s efforts in AI in the classroom, including the ways they can use Windows Copilot as an assistant adequately.
Nationally, the Pew Research Center found that 64% of high school-aged students are using AI chatbots, including ChatGPT and character.ai, for one reason or another. More than half of these students are using AI for help with schoolwork.
“We're held to big standards in education, so when it comes to sharing personally identifiable information, when it comes to Children's Online Privacy Acts, when it comes to internet access, there's so many things that we’re held to standards that very easily can be shared with these assistants if students and teachers are not aware on what happens to the data they enter into these machines when they're using them,” Johnson said.
COPPA, or the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, was originally passed by the Federal Trade Commission in 1999 with the intention of protecting minors who “surf the web.” Now, educators are making strides to ensure safety precautions extend to AI.
“We need to set the parameters, set the foundation, so that we then can evolve in sustainability in the years to come, because we don't have to do it all right now, but we can't afford not to address AI,” Johnson said.
Marion is beginning its education into artificial intelligence, despite Florida Senate Bill 482 dying in the Florida House earlier this year after passing in the Senate.
SB 482 outlines provisions making it so minors cannot become account holders for chatbots without parental consent. Guardians would also have the ability to apply time restrictions for their children’s accounts. They additionally would receive copies of all interactions between the account holder and the chatbot.
Other counties in Florida are receiving funds for similar purposes as Marion.
Combined with education relating to other industries such as applied robotics and welding, 10 districts are receiving funding from the Workforce CAP with the intention of teaching AI, an industry under a widening spotlight in Florida education.