And honestly, using AI to do things for you as a School Committee member is pretty bad and frustrating.
Earlier today (or yesterday depending on when you are reading this) School Committee Member Batory made this post on Facebook:
Right now, Pittsfield is funding its schools at about 1% above the state minimum requirement.
Let that sink in.
Meanwhile, surrounding districts are making very different choices:
• Lenox invests over 60% above the minimum
• Williamstown invests over 30% above the minimum
• Central Berkshire (Dalton area) invests 10–20% above the minimum
And here in Pittsfield?
We are essentially funding our schools at the floor.
At the same time, the city recently placed millions into free cash instead of directing more resources into classrooms.
This is not about what we can afford.
This is about what we are choosing to prioritize.
Net School Spending is supposed to be the starting point — not the finish line.
If we want stronger schools, better outcomes, and to keep families in this district, we cannot continue doing the bare minimum and expecting maximum results.
Democracy only works when people participate.
Show up. Speak out. Be heard.
(This post reflects my personal views, not those of the full School Committee.)
So, this post is pretty inaccurate. In FY26 Pittsfield required Net School Spending requirement was $104,024,895, the budgeted NSS was $119,378,120, which is around 14.75% over what is required. It’s definitely not 1%. The percentages are also not correct for Lenox, Central Berkshire, and Mount Greylock (Williamstown IS NOT it’s own district). Here is some data from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Net School Spending Report with the correct percentages and numbers for FY26.
Based on how this post was written and a lot of her past posts are written, I’m 100% certain this was a post created by ChatGPT. Here’s why:
- Her post uses a some emojis and em dashes, which are unusual for a Facebook post and is a sign the post was AI generated.
- The data table lists Williamstown as a district, which it isn’t as it is a part of Mount Greylock.
- For Pittsfield and Central Berkshire the table has a “~” before the range, meaning its an estimate, which doesn’t make sense as the calculation between percentage over net school spending would not be an estimate but the actual number. Williamstown and Lenox do not have the “~” before them.
- The ranges for the percentages are not equal, but also there shouldn’t be need for a range when reporting the percentage over net school spending, unless you are looking over a certain period of time which is also not reported in the table.
- The source link she provided in the comments has “?utm_source=chatgpt.com” appended to the end, meaning it was a link ChatGPT gave out. It also points to some old data on net school spending, with the page reporting 2022 data.
I get the argument that the city needs to spend more on schools, and there is a lot of debate and discussion that needs to be had regarding school funding for Pittsfield, which I won’t touch on here. However, any debate needs to have ACCURATE human verified information. This is not helpful and is actually harmful for our school community.
Local elected officials are the most trusted elected officials in the country, people believe their local officials more than Congress. With the increase of social media usage by local officials and the decrease in local news, local elected officials have taken on the role of providing information about local matters to their constituents. With this role comes the responsibility to provide accurate and verified information to the best of their ability.
This post by School Committee Member Batory goes against this. Artificial intelligence models are known to output wrong information and hallucinate. That’s why it’s best practice to use AI responsibly and ethically by verifying the output and making sure the information is correct. I personally don’t use AI much, but when I do I make sure the information it provides is correct. In my view Batory failed to responsibly verify this information. Whether intentional or unintentional such irresponsibility only fuels more distrust in our government institutions, especially when such inaccurate information is stated with such confidence. It also wastes peoples energy debating important issues such as school funding when the foundational facts of such debate are incorrect. If you go to the post and check out the comments and shares, there is already a lot of debate about her post, but nobody is refuting the misinformation that she helped to spread.
As a resident of Pittsfield, I’m frustrated by the disregarded for basic fact checking and the ethical responsibilities she has as a School Committee member. As a former School Committee member who put a lot of time into understanding the role and the functioning of school systems and admit when I don’t fully understand something, I’m flabbergasted by the complete disregard for taking the time to fully understand the role rather than just typing prompts into ChatGPT and taking what is says as gospel. Being a School Committee member takes time and commitment that cannot and should not be outsourced to AI. This is Trump level behavior, and Pittsfield and our students deserve better than this.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen inaccurate and unverified AI information from Batory, and I’m certain this won’t be the last. There is a lot more I could say on this subject, but I think this is enough for one blog post.