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- [00:02]
John Brucato
You're listening to ASBO International's School Business Insider. I'm your host, John Brucato. Each week on School Business Insider, I sit down with school business officials and industry experts from around the world to share their stories and explore the topics that matter most to you. Find out what it means to be a school business official and get your insider pass on all things school business. Hello, everyone. Today we're diving into one of the most exciting and sometimes daunting developments in our profession, artificial intelligence. Our guest today is Mary Ellen Norman, a retired school business official who has redefined what retired looks like. She's been on the front lines of AI exploration, delivering standout presentations at Asbo's annual conference, AASA's AI summit, and webinars on how AI can enhance facility management, budget storytelling, and even executive decision making. She's also authored a powerful article on how school business leaders can thoughtfully adopt and integrate AI into their work. From automating repetitive tasks to assisting in strategic financial planning, Mary Ellen's message is clear. AI isn't just coming, it's here. And it's time for school business leaders to embrace it. Mary Ellen, welcome to the podcast. I'm happy to have you.
- [01:25]
Mary Ellen Norman
Oh, thank you so much, John. I appreciate the, the request. Of course this is a fun topic.
- [01:31]
John Brucato
Even though it is, it is. And it's like I said, it is a daunting topic at some times. So we've had a few different AI episodes but they, they just keep seem to growing and growing because it's just a subject that's always changing. So to that end you've had a, you've had a pretty impactful in career in school business. Can you tell me why now in retirement you're focusing so deeply on AI? It doesn't sound too much like retirement to me, but nonetheless, you're not, I guess, a school business official and it's.
- [02:00]
Mary Ellen Norman
Yeah.
- [02:00]
John Brucato
Not official format.
- [02:02]
Mary Ellen Norman
Yeah. Not sitting in the seat per se, but I have, you know, ASBO and my state affiliate, M.A. aSBO has just always, always been a intellectual feeding ground, so to speak. So I love the work and one of the things, and one of the things I realized is that, you know, in terms of like what is my. Why in terms of what am I doing in retirement? Am I really retired or is it really kind of my third chapter and my next volume, my last volume of my life. So. And I have a lifelong goal of living past 100, so I got time to fill. And I have a recent granddaughter that was born in December who is in Generation Alpha. And she is going to be have classmates of Generation Beta. And so being in education, I feel, you know, I need to be prepared and sort of, what is she. What's her environment going to look like and how is education going to change? And that's part of why I've kind of dove into AI is, you know, you know, I'm Generation Jones, so to speak, which is the one that's between the baby boomer boomers and Generation X. So, you know, I had technology where I had, like dos, an AS400. My mother had a Kaypro computer, um, which was a laptop, so to speak, but it was the heaviest. Yeah. And then there was also something called a macintosh in my 20s. So, you know, who knows what, you know, the future is beyond our, all of our imaginations. So for me, it's really kind of a fun way to take content and, you know, a skill set that I have and say, okay, how can you do it better? I've always, always looked at how can we all do this? A lot of us do a lot of the same things. We follow statutes and regulations and things like that, but how do we. How do we do it better and how do we do it easier? Because we are always asked to do more with less. And so here's a tool that if, you know, learned like we did Lotus 1, 2, 3, to Excel, to Google Sheets, to whatever AI is going to produce for us.
- [04:29]
John Brucato
Right.
- [04:30]
Mary Ellen Norman
You know, how do we do that responsibly, ethically, with integrity, and with still maintaining the human element in our learning, in our teaching, in our work products? So I've had a lot of fun with it, and I call them experiments, and they're fun. So that's kind of my why in terms of this.
- [05:01]
John Brucato
I'm sure this will reveal itself throughout our conversation today, but you seem to have a strong appreciation for technology, and I'm chuckling to myself when you're going through the iterations of tech, starting back with DOS and having a lot of experience that with myself and being a former tech director in an earlier chapter in my life, I find myself every now and then just kind of taking stock in where we are today as a society and just how exponentially technology has changed. Do you ever do that? Do you ever think back to those DOS days and just how minimal it was? And I remember sitting in front of a terminal being like, this is the greatest thing ever. I mean, I can't believe we can produce this. And, like, rich text came out, and to your point, the Macintosh came out and we were able to start doing Word documents and presentations and videos. And to think that over the course of 25, 30 years, we went from just a black and white or green screen to having what seems like cogent conversations with computers. Do you ever just kind of take a moment and be like, wow, this is incredible?
- [06:04]
Mary Ellen Norman
Yes. And I did that recently because I got reconnected with my public library, of all things, what do those look like through AI? Because one of the things I do with AI is I always, in my prompts, I always ask for citations. And one, and the reason I do that is because I, I want to make sure I vet and verify that, you know, the information is accurate. What's the source? And lo and behold, actually a, a PhD thesis popped up and written by school business administrator, right? And I was like, wow, so how do I get that? Well, you can't get it unless you're part of the public library system, because PhDs are all on file with universities. So you know what, so I'm like, wow, like, this is the connection of why libraries are still so important, right? Because even though, yes, they've got books on the shelves, but they also have data and databases that, you know, are, are publicly available through, you know, mechanism. And you're, you know, so I encourage people to like, rethink their relationship with their public library as well, because it's. Particularly if you're citing and sourcing your, your work because that's how you can get, you're not spending money on books all the time. You can get them from the library if you actually want to read the book and, and, and the like. So that's one of, so that little event, I was like, oh, wow. Like that's, that was a little, that was as about as mind blowing as remembering my mother's kaypro computer and her taking that back and forth to work.
- [07:51]
John Brucato
Right.
- [07:52]
Mary Ellen Norman
And having it. And, and my brother's sister and I stuck with the electric typewriter still, because she was still forcing it. You have to type. You like that's something you have to do.
- [08:03]
John Brucato
And I, I'd assume with the library, the Dewey Decimal System is a thing of the past now, right?
- [08:07]
Mary Ellen Norman
Oh, totally. You don't need it because it's all ISBN numbers now, right?
- [08:12]
John Brucato
Yeah. So. So was there a particular moment or an application that you use when you realized that AI is going to be a game changer for SBOs? It, I forget the statistic, but it was, I don't know, maybe two years ago. It was one of ChatGPT was the fastest adopted application in history. I think if I'm, I'm kind of butchering this statistic, but I saw it on a chart. I was in a presentation for artificial intelligence and I saw it on a chart. Just kind of the adoption rates of, of chatgpt when compared to like Amazon and Google and all these other applications that we sometimes take for granted but use on a semi regular basis. Was there a moment where you were like, wow, this is, this is it. This is the next thing for, for school?
- [09:04]
Mary Ellen Norman
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the, the seed got planted. Quite honestly, the seed got planted by Aziz Zagaev, who does presentations.
- [09:14]
John Brucato
Had him on the podcast a few weeks ago.
- [09:16]
Mary Ellen Norman
Yeah, he's, he's a great soul. And so because I dabbled and you know, we've all cited Google University many times and so I have landed on one that is actually not frequently mentioned and that's perplexity and the reason why I use that one. And I'm dabbling with Gemini and dabbling with Copilot now. And I do use ChatGPT periodically, but that one in particular makes the citation. They came out first with doing citations. They also curate and, and pull in multiple AI models and tools. So if I want deep research, I can get that. If I want CHAT gbt, I can get that. And so it, but really I, that one is really geared towards more research and that's part of what I've been using it for and, and working with it.
- [10:21]
John Brucato
And the citation thing is huge because there was a big concern and I think there still is out there, that products like ChatGPT had hallucination, so it was spewing information to you, not citing it and treating it as fact, when really it was just made up.
- [10:36]
Mary Ellen Norman
Right. And sometimes, you know, it's like, you know, when you used to do your, you know, college and graduate research papers, you would, you know, you would read something and it would be, there'd be a footnote and you'd be like, oh, that, that, you know what? I actually might want to go read that article. Well now you click on the, on the footnote and it's there and you can read the article, which was, you know, I had to do that's to back to my library example. I couldn't just do that on this, on the thesis, but I was like, oh wait, I can go find that and for free. Because the person never turned it into a book, which is common these days. So.
- [11:15]
John Brucato
Right.
- [11:17]
Mary Ellen Norman
That, so I think that's the, the piece around and that's the Piece I think I really try to focus on as I talk to people about AI is where is your intellectual integrity? And, you know, approaching it as research. And you need to still cite your work and you need to cite your sources and you need to know that your sources are true and accurate. But one of the other things I've also noticed with. As the hallucinations are becoming fewer, I am having various applications be at war with one another on grammar and punctuation. And so you can't. You also have to make sure you proofread because there are periods missing off of sentences and there are. There's a hyphen war I'm having with three applications, including Word, which just put in a. Proofing. A proofreading element into Word, so.
- [12:20]
John Brucato
Right.
- [12:20]
Mary Ellen Norman
Or into Google Docs is somewhere. So you really. You can't. You have to still proof your work and still have. I just found a colleague for a report that I'm writing because I needed a human editor. I needed somebody who was meticulous about grammar because I was getting conflicting, like, where's the comma? Is there a comma? Not a common comma? So those are just some cautions as, as people kind of look at it, is you can't sit back, you know, and just let it do your work. You still have to engage and be in control of your, your content and what you distribute.
- [13:02]
John Brucato
Speaking of individual products. And I don't want to just to turn into what's your favorite AI program, but I was a part of the most recent ASBO International roundtable and we were talking all about artificial intelligence and how we use it practically in the business Office. And Tricia Shock, who was on the panel alongside me and a couple others, she mentioned this product called Fixer AI F, Y, X, E, R or just R. And really it integrates with Gmail or Outlook and will organize messages for you, automatically read your message and provide sample drafts. Have you tried that yet?
- [13:44]
Mary Ellen Norman
I have not. Gemini does a similar thing and there are a couple of others, but also even just. Yeah, Gemini is starting to do the same thing. So part of what I'm now doing, or we'll be doing over the next six months is kind of doing an audit of what are all the tools I'm using, what am I paying for and what am I paying for twice, for example. Right. So if Copilot in Outlook and Microsoft is doing the same thing, then do I need an application like, like Fixer, Do I need, you know, when, when do, when, or how do I use something like Quill bot.
- [14:38]
John Brucato
Right.
- [14:39]
Mary Ellen Norman
And those kinds of things, particularly around writing and disseminating writing and having a, you know, proofing.
- [14:48]
John Brucato
I've tried Fixer and it is one of the more impressive AI implementations I've seen.
- [14:54]
Mary Ellen Norman
Yeah.
- [14:54]
John Brucato
Just not in. I mean you could do the same thing theoretically with any kind of LLM because it'll parse the conversation and provide some sample responses but just the ease in which it does it for you is such a time saver and she was talking about it in the sense that it's able to really write these emails for me and it's not like it's replacing you, but it's saving you know, all those little emails over the course of a day or a week add up. So for it to draft something for you and you could most of the time maybe just send it as is or kind of tweak it to what you want. I'm really seeing those kinds of implementations really just being. Making school business officials much more efficient. Now to your point, Copilot is really making its way into the Microsoft suite of things but it, it's not integrated like this third party service and I think once Copilot kind of catches onto that that's going to be a game changer. So which is kind of funny because if the more people start using this it really is just AI talking to AI sometimes. You know.
- [15:58]
Mary Ellen Norman
Exactly. And yeah and another application I use really around kind of data and just collection of information is notion and there's. Mm.
- [16:10]
John Brucato
I've not heard of that one.
- [16:12]
Mary Ellen Norman
It's. They. It's a great tool. It's. It integrates with my calendar. It now integrates with Zoom. It integrates with. So their AI tool is now coming out. So that to the point where I've collected a number of. And I use Zotero to log articles is which a lot of PhD people use is that it can now go through that and sort of if say do I have an article on X and you know, pull articles that I have read in the past that I wanted to keep, you know, instead of you know those file boxes we used to travel with. You know. So it's. That's what's also fun. I just have a very curious mind about a lot of different things. So it's kind of. It's also a little bit of fun to just you know, see what you've collected and what's been the pattern of information that you've been curious about over a period of time and you know, what has the impact been.
- [17:11]
John Brucato
Right.
- [17:12]
Mary Ellen Norman
So I'm geeking out a little bit.
- [17:14]
John Brucato
But yeah, you can't help yourself. It really is a rabbit hole because you start finding similar products that do a lot of the same things but are better in just different nuanced fashions. So, I mean, it's an endless kind of exploration of different products. But I want to focus more on what you've been doing. Talking to school business officials, superintendents about AI and how it can enhance their work, and recently presented AI Powered Budget Tales and Crunching Numbers at the Speed of Thought, two presentations you delivered. So how exactly can AI tools enhance or accelerate budgeting financial storytelling for school districts?
- [17:52]
Mary Ellen Norman
I think, you know, a lot of us have are do it now at that point. Maybe not so much now. I. My presentation, the second presentation I did with the ASA kind of really focused on the business office staff. And part of my presentation sort of had people like go back to your office and give your facilities secretary or administrative assistant permission to use AI to play around with your utilities, kilowatt hour consumption and see what it produces and things, you know, things like that in terms of really having and allowing support staff to also become comfortable with it. Because part of AI is leveraging the brain power that we all have and we all think differently. So that particular assignment for facilities has prompted a new presentation I'm doing next week for ASBO around facilities of which there were. There are two publications about which have standards for facilities. And so how do you take these manuals? And that's really kind of what I've been working on is how do you take this manual or core information or best practices.
- [19:05]
John Brucato
Right.
- [19:05]
Mary Ellen Norman
And have AI help and assist and merge your data that you have in your district budget data, facilities data, transportation data, whatever that data set is. And how do you merge those best practices with that data to produce the analysis that you would have normally produced? And you're probably asking the same questions you were asking yourself in the brain. In your brain.
- [19:28]
John Brucato
Right. So essentially you're taking your actual data and benchmarking it off of industry standards. And rather than manually doing that and creating Excel charts and tables, it's able to kind of comparatively do that analysis for you. Yeah, yeah, that's. I mean, that alone is a day's worth of time saving.
- [19:48]
Mary Ellen Norman
Well, yeah. And a week's worth of finding whose date, like who's the benchmark. Right. And so when, when you already know there, there is a benchmark. And it's also something that probably you've always wanted to put in your budget document, but it's just that One thing that you just don't have time for and then the rest of the school year happens before the budget cycle starts over again.
- [20:13]
John Brucato
Right.
- [20:13]
Mary Ellen Norman
And that's where I really, in most of my presentations are always encouraging. Bring this back to your staff and have a conversation with your staff so you can empower them to do some of the data crunching and you know, mastering of prompts and things like that.
- [20:30]
John Brucato
So, so to that end, I mean, what, I guess anecdotally, unless you have some actual data, what has been the temperature with school business officials on their use of AI when you, you know, when you're telling them to take this back to their staff, are they equipped to do that or are you finding that they need more training themselves before they can then say, all right staff, I'm cutting you loose on this. Do this analysis on our kilowatt hours. What is kind of your, your sense out there right now?
- [20:59]
Mary Ellen Norman
I think everybody's still a little nervous, right, because there we haven't quite come to a protocol or an accepted practice of call it behavior or performance or things like that. So and I, you know, it's the same, what I get back is, I'm trying to equate it is it's the same feeling where, you know, you learn a new Excel feature and you go back to your staff and you're like, do I really want to let them loose with this? Or yet, you know, do I trust my staff or you know, the staff member you want to give it to immediately, right? Or you go back immediately. Like no matter what you learn at a conference, there's, there's always one or two or three staff members you have that you just can't wait to tell them how, like how to do something even though you don't know how to do it. You're so excited to learn it together, right? So I think that's the piece with that I think is potentially a lost opportunity is when people look at AI as a very insular, like self, self directed versus a team directed. Because I do find it fascinating and I have used different chat, different AI models to just see what the answer is and they will come up with different answers. And, and I think that's very an very enriching kind of conversation and perspective. Right? And so why not have your staff, you go and do their prompts and see what information you get and it's just a rich conversation you can have about knowing what the data is in your district and then everybody in your office knows, oh, this is. And then you know what prompts you want to use, what formats you want to use, and things like that. And it be. I see it as an opportunity to create a team and a stronger team because you're learning something new. Everybody's learning something new, and they're going to be some phenomenal successes and they're going to be some crash and burn experiences.
- [22:59]
John Brucato
I'm wondering too, what the general appetite is from your average business office staff on learning something new, like AI, for example. I mean, you had mentioned Excel and cutting them loose with different formulas. My staff is great with Excel, but there's like, I have used Vlookup xlookup in a lot of different. Not even that complicated, but a combination of formulas to really crunch data really easily. I've tried to show them how to do it, but they just don't seem to have the appetite. It's easier just to go, hey, John, can you make this? Do this? And it's, for me it's, you know, five seconds, but for them it's, you know, trying to figure out the syntax of the formula. What do you think is the appetite out there for picking up yet another thing to learn?
- [23:42]
Mary Ellen Norman
I think it's about how it's presented.
- [23:46]
John Brucato
Sure.
- [23:46]
Mary Ellen Norman
Honestly, I mean, and I think that's part of why I use the word experiment, because it is an experiment. You know, you talk about vlookups, I, you know, I talk about pivot tables. And, you know, pivot tables were revolutionary in my world of learning Excel.
- [24:09]
John Brucato
Right.
- [24:11]
Mary Ellen Norman
There is a point, you know, as we all are teachers, is you have to let the student fish.
- [24:19]
John Brucato
Right.
- [24:20]
Mary Ellen Norman
And you have to go make them fish sometimes. But now what's interesting is you could say, you know, what, Use the district's AI tool and find out what the formula is.
- [24:31]
John Brucato
Right, right. It's as easy as that now. And I remember I used to scour the Internet because you would find the formula, but it was only for like a really specific use case. What I love now is you can say, here's what I'm trying to do, and it'll help you tailor a formula to your specific task, not you trying to reverse engineer somebody else's solution.
- [24:52]
Mary Ellen Norman
Right, right. And I. And the instructions that you get are pretty good. Um, so, because I've had to. I had a. One of the applications was offering like a test for AI, and so I didn't realize that I was in a sample set and I started using it for how to use the application. That was phenomenal. And then I ran out of my, whatever, you know, bits or Coins or whatever they do for metering it. And I was like, oh, you know, they. This was really a great tool for how to learn their application because I got great instructions. They were tailored to what I needed. And that's another future of AI is, you know, imagine having your process and procedure manual and AI for any staff person to just like, I don't know how to do a reimbursement. How do I do a reimbursement? And then you walk them through the.
- [25:41]
John Brucato
Form that was part of our roundtable. One of the districts is creating their own GPTs as kind of like a chatbot or a Q and A for, you know, you can put a collective bargaining agreement into a GPT and you can say, you know, how much am I going to get per hour if I chaperone this? Right. And it has all that logged in the. And it's only specific to that contract, so you're not pulling in arbitrary information from irrelevant sources. It's pretty impressive.
- [26:08]
Mary Ellen Norman
Yeah. So the, you know, I guess I'm going to just come back to that library analogy is that it's a new library.
- [26:15]
John Brucato
Right? Right.
- [26:16]
Mary Ellen Norman
And that's part of where I kind of call it the third brain is. That's what, you know, your first brain is what you're born with. It's your innate skills, talents. Your second brain is how you organize in the information you learned or how you structure what your kind of passion and talents have produced. And your third brain is here's the world and what do you want to know? And that's the same with a library. Here's, you know, here's the world. What do you want to know? So it's fairly exciting. And I think the piece is. Oh, and I. This is just a belief system I've had with all of my. The staff that have ever worked for me is, you know, if I'm growing, I want them to be growing, too. So, sure, I'm. It took a bit, but I got comfortable having, you know, learning with them.
- [27:03]
John Brucato
Right.
- [27:03]
Mary Ellen Norman
And asking them to learn with me. And I think AI produces that same kind of thing. And it's kind of fun and exciting because, yeah, you can have success, phenomenal success, or you can all see, yeah, the experiment failed. What did we learn?
- [27:21]
John Brucato
Right. Right. So in your recent article with ASBO International, you posed a question. Is AI helpful or is it harmful? So when it comes to the use of artificial intelligence, what would you recommend to school business leaders that they watch out for?
- [27:40]
Mary Ellen Norman
I think it's that they unintentionally inadvertently potentially unconsciously sabotage their own integrity. And what I mean by that is they become too dependent on AI being the authority. They don't filter that information to their own district, their district's politics, their community. Because as much as you try to sort of narrow down your, your resources or whatever you're pulling in, you're going to, you're, it's going to go out into the world. And that's where the chatbots become very, very, very helpful to, you know, keep the sandbox contained and the sand contained into the district. But I do see people having a tendency to rely on it to replace because it's so fast and we are so, we are so stretched. But there's still that integrity piece that you.
- [28:51]
John Brucato
Well, it's important to remember the school business official is still the expert. Right. You're not replacing yourself with AI it should only help you enhance your already impressive skill set.
- [29:00]
Mary Ellen Norman
Right. And I think that's where you look at, okay, what are the questions and the prompts that I'm asking? Am I in control in directing this analysis? Right. So just as you think about, okay, what question am I going to ask if I need to do a, you know, quarterly budget report? What questions am I asking being in control and driving that inquiry and the analysis and you know, we always sit back and look at our tables and for number sense and say, do those make sense?
- [29:33]
John Brucato
Right. You have that gut check.
- [29:34]
Mary Ellen Norman
Yeah. And then also making sure you, Pat and I advocate this now even before AI is always have somebody else read your memo before it goes to school committee.
- [29:46]
John Brucato
Sure.
- [29:48]
Mary Ellen Norman
Because even on a good day, you can have a sense that didn't end and another sentence began and you, you know, a cut and paste went bad.
- [29:58]
John Brucato
Right.
- [29:59]
Mary Ellen Norman
And you've read it a thousand times and you've missed it because it's in your head.
- [30:02]
John Brucato
Well, that's, that's another great use of AI is when I'm proofreading my own stuff. It's challenging because to your point, you've read it a thousand times and your, your brain just kind of blocks it out or skips it. AI has been a great tool for reading multi page budget documents, for just simple grammatical and punctuation, even inconsistencies with my formatting in maybe I missed a comma on a thousandths or something like that. That has been great because it does it in two seconds. So I. But again, to your earlier point, it's not necessarily perfect. You still need to harbor your own voice and make sure you're proofing the proofreading.
- [30:45]
Mary Ellen Norman
Right. And I started using AI as a prep tool for a school committee. So I would run my memos through and say, you know, what questions as a reader in this community, what questions might a school community member have? Or, you know, is there a point in my memo that is needs better clarification, you know, or may not be clear. Is there a term that isn't, you know, defined or commonly known? And so that's how I started using AI was kind of doing that writing evaluation and to prep for school committees. So I had some questions in my head that potentially could be asked.
- [31:24]
John Brucato
Right.
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Mary Ellen Norman
And also questions in my head if there's a pregnant pause I could fill with something. Because sometimes that happens. Not often, but sometimes.
- [31:35]
John Brucato
Right. So what would be your guidance on starting responsibly? You know, there's a lot of hype out there and it can be overwhelming with everybody talking about AI. I've had multiple different episodes on artificial intelligence on School Business Insider. There's a lot of articles on school business now, and there's just a lot of literature out there. In general, people could start feeling like they're behind the ball or maybe if they haven't dove in yet, it's, it's too late. What's a good way for them to start and especially start responsibly?
- [32:13]
Mary Ellen Norman
I think for, from my standpoint, kind of looking back at my career is really taking kind of a little bit of a pause and saying, okay, how do I learn best? Do I have self awareness about how I learn and what makes me excited to learn about a new thing? And then I always encourage people think of it as an experiment. So every time you approach it, it's an experiment. And I think having a mindset about it being an experiment will help you strengthen the, your sort of integrity, integrity and intuition about, okay, this is really, this is my work. There are pieces of it that have been synthesized or there are pieces of it that, you know, may have been rewritten by a proofreading application because it can, because it makes it sound better. But in the end is what I'm presenting is that my work, my beliefs, my what I want to communicate. So I think it's the experiment with it. There are some people that have gone all in. And I think you mentioned this in, in that same webinar, which is, you know, loading up samples of your own writing so that it sounds like, sounds like you. And I think that's important to do if you're doing a lot of writing is, and you want to have your voice, you know, maintained and retained.
- [33:51]
John Brucato
Right.
- [33:52]
Mary Ellen Norman
That is one fear I have kind of going forward with AI is we're going to all sound like, you know, it's all the same, same voice for everybody. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's where you can never give up your, who you are and your personality needs to come through with AI, so it's really experiment, test it out. They're going to be failures. And we're in education and we teach kids that failure is actually a learning process. It's not, it's not the end.
- [34:28]
John Brucato
Right.
- [34:28]
Mary Ellen Norman
It's the beginning. And it's actually a beginning of potentially something new and exciting because you weren't meant to go right, you were meant to go left or you were meant to go left and you, you now you need to go right. So, so. Or straight, for example. So I think it's the, it's, you know, give yourself some grace. Sure. And it's like dos, when you had to learn dos. I mean.
- [34:53]
John Brucato
Yeah, that was, that wasn't natural.
- [34:55]
Mary Ellen Norman
No, that was the most convoluted, like script coding, you know. Yeah. Computer scientists, I mean, even, even coders don't code anymore. Right.
- [35:06]
John Brucato
Yeah. It's amazing.
- [35:07]
Mary Ellen Norman
AI now can code for you. So, you know, but there's a, there's a level of understanding of what good code is and efficient code is. And you have to. That AI doesn't have that, you know, that's a human. You know, our human brain does some amazing, you know, calculations in our intuition and our visceral human body reactions to things, you know, is, are, are to be, you know, enhanced and paid attention to as you continue to do your work.
- [35:41]
John Brucato
Right.
- [35:43]
Mary Ellen Norman
So that's, I think it's about, just give yourself some grace, experiment and, you know, footnote what you need to footnote.
- [35:55]
John Brucato
Right.
- [35:56]
Mary Ellen Norman
Just like research.
- [35:57]
John Brucato
How do you see the role of the school business official evolving in the next few years? I mean, it sounds like AI is going to become much more integrated in leadership and writing and operations, budget development. How do you see the school business officials day to day changing?
- [36:17]
Mary Ellen Norman
I think some of the tasks that we have always dreamed of automating will finally get automated for us. It will just happen for us. Yeah, but the other, the big change I see happening is really how. What's the expertise, knowledge that we need to have to be able to lead our districts in our financial and, you know, finances and operations, and that's not something that AI can produce for you because there's an interpretation of, you know, getting, you know, boots on the ground and getting, getting things done. And there's still human beings that are voting our appropriations. Right. There's still individuals that need to know and understand. Not everybody's going to be a reader. Some people will be listening to our reports versus reading our reports. But there's still core understanding that we want our constituents to have.
- [37:20]
John Brucato
Right.
- [37:21]
Mary Ellen Norman
And that I think is those communication skills are going to be important. Expertise and knowledge is going to be important to be able to talk about a variety. I mean, you and I both know when we're in front of a public meeting, we get asked questions from all over. That is not going to change. And you're going to need to know everything you need to know because.
- [37:42]
John Brucato
Yeah, you're not going to be able to say with just one moment and plug it into AI and.
- [37:45]
Mary Ellen Norman
No, no. Unless you've got like, unless we get so sophisticated we've got like a little bot in our ear. But even then, even then you have to evaluate it and think about it and, and say, okay, is this something I would like to repeat? I mean you're not, this is, that's the integrity piece is that you still have to know and be able to speak intelligently and confidently to provide your constituents some assurance that you have a command of the finances.
- [38:15]
John Brucato
And AI is not going to help you with your judgment real time either.
- [38:18]
Mary Ellen Norman
No, no, it's not. When your special ed costs are skyrocketing or you need staff, but you don't have money to pay for that staff, you know, you've got to, it can help you figure out where some trades might be, trading of staff positions might be, but it's not going to help you with the human interaction. We are a very human heavy, you know, dependent industry of education. The virtual, the virtual classroom will be coming for my granddaughter and that. But there's still going to need to be human interaction.
- [38:55]
John Brucato
Absolutely, yeah. So for someone listening who may want to get started with some AI tools, we talked about a few of the ones we're experimenting with that we like that maybe need some work. But where's a good starting point? Like, where's like a low risk entry point for somebody who may not be so versed in AI today?
- [39:17]
Mary Ellen Norman
I think if the district that you're in is allowing AI or not, maybe not allowing it as a central administrator. I think it's a great topic of conversation to allow whatever, if you're using Gemini or Copilot, Microsoft or Google is, you know, allow the central administration to begin to experiment with it because that will have some boundaries around it for you. So again, because you don't want to put personal information in. You want to be careful about public information, what's public, what's private, and kind of what your searches are. So, you know, you're an education environment. Let's learn on the job. And so I think, as a team, one a good place, actually. If I was still in a district and I was facing this question, I'd be like, let's get all over the budget document, folks, and your section and run it through AI and ask it some questions. And what data do you. How do you want to present your school?
- [40:23]
John Brucato
Right.
- [40:24]
Mary Ellen Norman
You know, what information have you always wanted to get into that budget document? Because that's a marketing piece. And I've always communicated to my administrators that somebody, a community member that reads your section, your department, your school section, should be able to walk in your school and see exactly what they read on paper. Like, that's the best version of a budget document. So what do you want? How do you want to improve it? How do you want to have it? So that's where I would start, kind of start as a group kind of activity, because, again, you can all learn and somebody's gonna find a prompt that produces all sorts of stuff for them and, you know, sharing and things like that. But I think that in the work environment, that's the best place to start. You can start outside of that on your own time, but, you know, it can be consuming. And so it depends if, you know, I'm in a. I'm in a retrospective of work life balance is that work is at work and life is at home.
- [41:29]
John Brucato
Right.
- [41:31]
Mary Ellen Norman
And so that's the. But it's also conversations with kids and grandkids about, you know, are they using AI or are they not using AI, you know, and how to teach them to be responsible and, you know, have those conversations about your integrity and how. Who you want to be as a human being. You know, those parent conversations we have with our kids. Now you have, you know, it's AI. It's not. So have those conversations and talk to people about how they're using it, and then experiment or have them show you. It's. It's fascinating.
- [42:05]
John Brucato
Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. I mean, I'm learning more every day, and I am using it every day. Really. It used to be, like, once a week. I didn't know if this was going to fit into my work life. And now I've found just so many different efficiencies. So it's. I can't. I can't imagine what it's going to be like six months a year from now. Who knows?
- [42:24]
Mary Ellen Norman
Well, it's changing every day.
- [42:26]
John Brucato
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the whole deep research function when I found out about that was incredible. It was, it's, it's awesome. But so you obviously are all in on AI. You're, you're a pinnacle in the organization of ASBO and AASA in terms of being able to correlate what AI is and how it helps everybody in their profession. Can you plug some upcoming presentations or webinars? What do you have coming up that people can, can check out your work?
- [42:55]
Mary Ellen Norman
So next week I'm doing a webinar for Asbo on using AI for facilities on the 29th.
- [43:01]
John Brucato
Okay. So that'll be May 29th. I'm not sure when this will air, but that'll be recorded too.
- [43:07]
Mary Ellen Norman
Yeah, I'm sure it's recorded and I believe it's free. So it probably will be available to ASBO members. I know it'll be available in the Learning Learning module there. And then, you know, it's summer. So I'm thinking about, you know, I'm a little resident. Oh, I have actually submitted a proposal to talk to superintendents about the concept I have about a third brain and really talking about the education environment and kind of what do we need to prepare for. Sure. So my interest around AI is really that, you know, policy management, not necessarily training on tools, but really the like edge as educators. What to some point of your questions, what do we need to think about? What do we need to think about in terms of, you know, my six month old granddaughter and she's going to have when she gets to school in five, six years, what's that going to look like?
- [44:10]
John Brucato
Right.
- [44:10]
Mary Ellen Norman
And you know, if we're still twiddling our thumbs and you know, nervous about it, then we have a lost opportunity of, of growth. So what are some of the questions? So I do have a presentation proposal to talk to superintendents about. How do you, you know, what is the leadership around this? What are some of the questions that you need to grapple with or would you want to grapple with? And so hopefully that will get accepted and I'll, you know, and I'll probably do more.
- [44:41]
John Brucato
Yeah. Well, great. Well, Mary Ellen, thank you for coming on School Business Insider day and sharing everything AI. I'm sure you'll be back again. This product and this technology evolve. But thank you.
- [44:54]
Mary Ellen Norman
Oh, thank you so much, John.
- [44:57]
John Brucato
Thank you for tuning in to School Business Insider. Make sure to check back each week for your favorite topics on school business.