Located near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Highline Public Schools serves many students and families from around the world, including some who are new to the United States. Families across Highline speak more than 89 languages, reflecting the rich diversity of the Highline community. At the center of the district’s work is the Highline Promise. From classrooms to front offices to transportation and AI committees, staff across Highline play a role in bringing that promise to life.
“Highline Public Schools Promise is that every student is known by name, strength, and need, and graduates prepared for the future they choose,” says Teshon Christie, the Highline’s Chief of Digital Transformation and Innovation, and recent Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award winner.
It is a statement that Christie refers to not as a mission, but as a living accountability measure. “The amazing thing about that is that regardless of who you go to in our system, you know this promise,” Christie says. “Everyone from our bus drivers to nutrition services workers—everyone at Highline knows this promise and that it is our focus.”
Scaling the Personal Touch
For a district of more than 16,500 students across 34 sites, “personalization” is often a buzzword that loses meaning at scale. For Christie, scaling this promise isn’t about software alone, but about leadership consistency and human connection.
“We scale our promise through humans,” Christie says. “When you break down each part, it’s easy for a person to see what their role is. If a bus driver gets to know their students by name, they can identify strengths and needs during the ride and communicate those back to the office staff. It makes sense operationally and instructionally.”
This human-centric approach is organized around four board-adopted goals:
- Culture of Belonging: A culture where all are welcome, valued, and safe.
- Innovative Learning: Academic experiences that engage, empower, and challenge every student.
- Bilingual and Biliterate: Multicultural skills that enable students to live, work, and communicate across cultures.
- Future Ready: Students explore possibilities and develop mindsets that prepare them for a changing future.
Navigating the AI Frontier
As the Chief of Digital Transformation, Christie’s job involves managing everything from data assessment to instructional technology, as well as navigating the ethical and practical implementation of AI.
Highline is now two years into its AI journey, anchored by a group of AI ambassadors who have developed vision and guidance documents. Rather than banning the technology out of fear, Highline is focusing on future readiness.
“We’re really starting to shift the language from ‘cheating’ to a student’s ‘passive vs. active use of AI,’” Christie says. “Cheating is so binary that it doesn’t describe the whole story. If using a tool is seen as cheating, then what needs to change about education in order to support our ability to move forward with any tool?”
One of Highline’s most successful implementations is Colleague AI, a tool developed out of the University of Washington. Highline currently has 300 teachers actively using the platform.
Christie is particularly excited about involving students in the policy-making process, noting that their insights are often more nuanced than those of adults.
“I was at one of our high schools where they did a unit on AI policy,” Christie recalls. “The students were very specific. They said, ‘I don’t want to be graded by AI because that breaks the relationship.’ They actually mentioned ‘culture of belonging.’ They want their teachers to have grace and support them in ways that help them get better—things an AI currently won’t do.”
Building Trust Through Authentic Engagement
For Christie, the success of any digital initiative depends on the strength of the district’s relationship with its community. He advocates for authentic family engagement, which moves beyond simply inviting parents to a meeting.
“Just being at the table isn’t enough,” Christie says. “You want people to be able to give input and then see their input reflected in whatever comes out. Even if it’s, ‘We weren’t able to do this because of these reasons,’ you still need to be honest and transparent so that trust is built over time.”
This trust is vital when tackling sensitive topics such as screen time. Christie points out that for many Highline students, a school-issued laptop is their only access to a large-screen device.
“Not every student using a district device after hours is on social media,” he says. “They might be learning how physics works on YouTube in a way that makes sense to them. You can’t just say they spent eight hours on YouTube and assume it was wasted time.”
A System, Not a Set of Divisions
Ultimately, Christie’s goal is to dissolve the traditional silos between IT and instruction. By focusing on shared bodies of work rather than departmental responsibilities, Highline ensures that no stakeholder is left out of the conversation.
“It’s about how we intentionally involve everyone in our system so it feels more like a system rather than divisions, departments, and people who work on separate things,” Christie says.
By keeping the “Promise” at the center of every digital and operational decision, Highline Public Schools is proving that even in a high-tech world, the most powerful tool in education remains the human connection.