Parents, teachers and advocates criticized the troubled rollout and collapse of Los Angeles Unified’s splashy artificial intelligence chatbot, “Ed,” as the district moved ahead with more projects powered by the cutting-edge technology.

LAUSD shut down the chatbot last month after the company hired to build it lost its CEO and laid off workers. District officials said they would try to save the $6 million project.

Despite everything, a few days later, on June 18, the Los Angeles Unified school board passed a resolution to build a new, AI-powered web portal where parents can access data about school budgets and student performance.

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However, teachers and families said the district needed to focus on academics and social services before launching new technology projects, address ongoing problems with the botched rollout, and address ongoing concerns about data security.

Evelyn Aleman, founder of Our Voice, a parent group that advocates for poor, Hispanic families in LA Unified, said the school district would be better off addressing the literacy crisis and homelessness epidemic among students instead of rushing to implement new technology.

“The management rolls out the latest technology, but the parents I work with have no idea what it’s all about,” Aleman said.

Many families don’t even have internet to access the new AI-powered tools, Aleman said. “Parents are advocating for very fundamental issues like literacy, school safety and mental health resources,” she said.

LA Unified distinguished itself in March by announcing the ambitious rollout of its new AI-powered chatbot, an animated sun named “Ed,” becoming the first school district in the country to deploy artificial intelligence technology at scale for families.

School principal Aberto Carvalho hailed the high-profile effort as a “game changer” that would give families unprecedented access to student data and school information, and could eventually lead to the automated development of individualized lessons and instructional support.

But just three months later, AllHere announced that its CEO had left and that it had laid off most of its employees due to financial problems. LAUSD immediately took the Signature Ed chatbot offline, district officials said, because there were no AllHere staff available to oversee it.

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LAUSD officials said the district had already paid the company about $3 million of a five-year, $6 million contract when Ed closed. The district is trying to revive the expensive chatbot, officials said, but declined to say when it would be ready.

The LAUSD Inspector General’s Office is investigating allegations that AllHere violated data protection rules.

Lester Garcia, government relations advisor for Service Employees International Union Local 99, the union representing LAUSD teaching assistants and other school staff, said school employees and union officials are concerned that private information may have been compromised.

“I think there are a lot more questions than answers about why LAUSD accelerated this AI system in the first place,” Garcia said.

Dan Chang, a math teacher at James Madison Middle School and a candidate in LA Unified’s upcoming school board elections this fall, says the Ed chatbot has never been very useful to schools and students, even when it was operational.

Chang, whose son attends another LAUSD high school, said the Ed chatbot mostly provided parents with general information that could also be found elsewhere on the district’s website.

“As a teacher, the use case it was originally intended for seemed very marginal,” Chang said.

Chang said AI can be better deployed by using the technology in ways that teachers can use.

Chang said AI could be used to analyze student assessment data, giving teachers unprecedented insights into academic progress. The information could be used to inform instruction and shared with parents at teacher conferences, he said.

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But Chang said the Ed program’s spectacular failure could deter schools from embracing such innovations. “It’s going to be a deterrent for teachers who want to try out new technologies,” he said. “And these are things that can really help students.”

Despite the challenges LAUSD faces in implementing AI technology for the curriculum, the district will continue to explore ways to use AI, LA Unified officials said.

LA Unified School Board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin said the district is already working on an AI-based budgeting tool that can track income and expenses for schools and PTA organizations and tie spending patterns to student outcomes.

Along with board member Nick Melvoin, Ortiz Franklin introduced and passed a resolution last month asking the district to develop the AI-based budgeting tool for use next year and to make the budget information collected by the tool publicly available on a district webpage.

Ortiz Franklin said the district’s troubled partnership with the AllHere on the Ed chatbot offers a learning opportunity for future AI projects. “We can apply lessons learned from our current interactions with AI vendors to ensure we’re making the best decisions for students,” she said.

Stephen Aguilar, a professor of education at the University of Southern California who studies the use of AI in schools at USC’s Center for Generative AI and Society, said that despite Ed’s troubled rollout, Los Angeles and other school districts across the country will eventually embrace AI.

“Districts are rushing to integrate AI into the classroom without knowing what it can do,” Aguilar said. “There’s a rush to be innovative, but that comes with risks, and one of those risks is trying untested technologies.”