Brian Bills (Submitted by Brian Bills)

Looking back on his first term on the Lake Oswego School Board, Brian Bills can easily pinpoint what he’s most proud of.

“It’s the cell phone ban,” said Bills. “It is the fundamental shift in how students interact at school. One of the things that we heard about early on (after the ban) was, ‘you know how loud the hallways were, right?’ Students are actually talking and I think that’s great,” said Bills.

Bills is running unopposed for reelection for position 3 on the board.

When Bills started on the board four years ago, his son was starting at Lake Oswego High School. Now he’s heading toward his senior year and Bills’ two younger children are in elementary and middle school. Some things have changed significantly in the district since 2021, such as the “off and away” cell phone ban, but many things are the same.

“I made the very quasi-infamous statement early on in my tenure … ‘I’m going to make my decisions based on science, not sentiment,’” said Bills. “I stand behind that position at the time. In hindsight, I’ve learned more and I don’t think it was as necessary as it was now. In terms of losing students, it’s unique because we live in a community in which dropping $26,000 to send your kid to private schools is an option. In a lot of communities that just wasn’t the option.”

There are also new challenges and opportunities — budget cuts and artificial intelligence, to name just two.

“I think what we’ve handled really well is a function of a multiyear runway,” said Bills. “We are incredibly fortunate to have (chief financial officer) Stuart Ketzler at the financial helm. The side account investments that he made, some of the other financial decisions that he made prior to the PERS hits that were 20% today, significantly mitigated the impact that we are facing from a budget perspective.”

Bills said cuts have galvanized the community to take action.

“This is not a school board or a school administration problem. It is a community problem. It’s a community problem that is driven by things that are largely outside of control with the community, and as a consequence, we all have to figure out how to solve the problem. There is no magic switch,” said Bills.

Bills has spoken about AI in the classroom before and was a speaker at the Oregon Schools Boards Association conference on the subject. He warns of a hesitation around AI that’s called “the self preservation bias.”

“We still treat AI as cheating. It is something less than authentic. It is circumventing the hard work path that we value and praise and laud so much. I think that will change. I think that will change in time,” he said.

Bills is heading an AI professional development course with school district Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction LaKeyshua Washington. The work will focus on creating prompts that can help teachers develop curriculum, lesson plans and individualized instruction.

“The $175-an-hour chemistry tutor is very, very prominent in this community, but it does not exist everywhere,” Bills said. “And for those students who don’t have parents spending $100,000 on tutors and coaches and private training and summer camps at Stanford and all those things, it allows students to compete for the same targets that those fortunately resourced students are competing for.”

Bills believes that AI could functionally democratize “access to academic support resources” and change education at its core in the future. This could include providing one-on-one tutors for state assessments or SAT/ACT tests.

When it comes to assessments, Bills believes data can be flawed — not because students are performing better than the scores reflect, but because a significant amount of students are opting out of the tests or prioritizing exams that will have a meaningful impact on their future or grades.

“If you made it a graduation requirement, it would absolutely improve scores,” said Bills.

He hopes through accountability, data and individualized education strategies using AI, assessments will improve during his next term on the board.

“I personally am a fan of public education because I think it gives students a clearer sense of what the real world looks like.,” said Bills. “I’m a big proponent of the marketplace of ideas, where you have perspectives and opinions and those things happen more organically and more pervasively in public school, in my opinion, than they do in private school.”