PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Philadelphia School District plans to use a two-way communication system that includes artificial intelligence to be more responsive to parents and the public.
It's an effort to address an issue that Superintendent Tony Watlington says he heard as soon as he arrived here last summer.
"Our parents and communities said across the city that we have to do a better job returning phone calls, returning emails, resolving issues and concerns and being more respectful and responsive," Watlington told KYW Newsradio in a back-to-school interview.
The district plans to pilot a software system called Let's Talk. Watlington says the system, which would appear as a website widget, includes a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence to answer frequently asked questions.
"But we don't want that to be the norm or the standard communication because we want to have that personal connection here in Philadelphia," Watlington said. "We are first prioritizing the human touch. We want people to call phone offices and someone to pick up the phone and be able to connect."
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Let's Talk, which is used by more than 400 school districts across the nation, allows parents to give a one-to-10 rating on the quality of responses. District staff will evaluate the feedback, Watlington said.
"How many unreturned email or written inquiries do we have? Where are they? What's the problem?"
The school board earlier this year approved a nearly $900,000, three-year contract with the firm K12 Insight for the software platform.
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