Panorama Education Resources Podcast

Episode 3

Embracing AI for Student and Teacher Success with Lawrence Sanchez

How can school districts embrace AI in education while keeping students and teachers at the center? In this episode, Superintendent Lawrence Sanchez of Belén Consolidated Schools (NM) shares how his district is building an AI-positive culture that improves teacher efficiency, strengthens student support systems, and helps staff use data more effectively.

In this episode, Lawrence Sanchez shares insight into how Panorama Education’s AI-powered tools are helping educators reclaim valuable time, streamline student data, and collaborate more efficiently across classrooms and campuses. He explains how his team uses AI ethically and responsibly, supporting student surveys, streamlining paperwork, implementing targeted attendance interventions. Lawerence emphasizes the importance of building systems focused on student outcomes, transparency, and community engagement.

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TOPICS COVERED

How AI is helping teachers save time
How Panorama supports educators with student data, interventions, and progress monitoring
What it means to build an AI-positive culture in K–12 schools
How Student Outcome Focused Governance guides district decisions and improves student achievement

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Aaron Feuer

Host | CEO &
Co-founder of Panorama Education

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Lawrence Sanchez

Superintendent, Belén Consolidated Schools (NM)

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More About The Leading & Learning with AI Podcast

This is the podcast where top K-12 education leaders and experts explore how AI is reshaping teaching, learning, and school leadership—one real story at a time. Hosted by Aaron Feuer, CEO and Co-Founder of Panorama Education, each episode offers a roadmap for implementing AI in your school or district, along with tools, lessons learned, and practical strategies you can bring to your team.

You’ll hear directly from leaders applying AI to solve big challenges like chronic absenteeism, literacy gaps, and teacher burnout in ways that are safe and secure, personalized, and anchored in driving student outcomes. Wherever you are in your school or district’s AI journey, this show is your guide to impactful AI in K-12.

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Episode Transcript

Aaron Feuer:

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Leading and Learning with AI podcast, brought to you by Panorama Education. I'm Aaron Fuer, and today I'm joined by Lawrence Sanchez, superintendent of Belen Consolidated Schools in New Mexico. Lawrence is leading a district of around 3,600 students that has embraced, you know, what you're calling AI positive culture. And I really appreciate you've been focused on not just like, new tools, but on how we reshape mindsets, how we reclaim teacher time, and how we build a system where analytics, attendance, behavior, and student voice all come together. I appreciate you were sharing with me that you've been an educator in belen schools for 31 years. The teacher principal, now a superintendent. I think that's exceptional leadership that sets you up for this work here, and I'm thrilled to have you. So thank you for being with us, Lawrence.

Aaron Feuer:

And let's jump in.

Lawrence Sanchez:

I like doing these things, so thank you for having me.

Aaron Feuer:

I love it. Well, I wanted to start leadership I know, is something that I've really enjoyed in our past conversations together. I'd love to hear from you. How has your approach to leadership evolved as AI has entered education?

Lawrence Sanchez:

I think it helps us to be more specific in leading our stakeholders. And this is our motto, and this is post AI. So I guess I could say AI has had an effect, is we want to create an environment in which all can be successful, and that's our students, our teachers, our principals, anybody that is associated with Bolin Consolidated Schools, we want to create that environment. AI helps us to give back some time by teaching teachers how to utilize the tools and with those that have been early adopters, I think it has accomplished that.

Aaron Feuer:

You know, I really appreciate, you know, as you've been leading through this, it's not just been about tools. It's about, you know, your note here about time and elevating the role. What does that look like for you to make more time for your staff?

Lawrence Sanchez:

So we use it in many different ways. What helps are the innovations that Panorama has been adding. So about a year ago, when we came back for our spring semester, we did some training, not just on AI, but that was one of the ones that we did, and I led it. And I wanted to show teachers because I know that when you have to fill out the paperwork required for a student that's either has an IEP or may be getting tested to see if they qualify for an iep, first of all, it takes time, and we have to make it individual, and that gets difficult. Not that we as educators don't have good use of language, but to be able to take the time and write it so that it comes across in the professional way and be able to do the research. This a simple tool is the Panorama Insights tool, which people, when I tell them this is how easy it is. If you're not familiar with Panorama, you don't believe it. It's a push a click of a button off the student dashboard and it's going to give us feedback on everything that's contained within that dashboard.

Lawrence Sanchez:

You can take that as the teacher and then create the writing that you need to fill out those forms. If you need to go further in depth, you can use Solara and use AI to get a better idea of how the student's doing in all four areas that Panorama is tracking and see if there's been improvement or non improvement. I know that with our ancillary staff, especially our diagnosticians, they love Panorama because it's really easy for them to get the data that they need in order to do the required testing on the students. We also use it. Our state, the state of New Mexico, does require that we do a survey, a student survey for grades three through 12 in the fall and again in the spring. We do it anyway, it makes sense, but we participate in that. And I think one of the benefits of being a Panorama school district is that goes straight to our students dashboard. And so that makes it really helpful for us because it's pretty much live information.

Lawrence Sanchez:

And so if I'm a teacher in a classroom and I'm going to use an elementary classroom, 20 to 25 kids, the Panorama tools make it easy for me to see, hey, how is this student doing? Because I'm not just looking at behavior, course performance or attendance. When I meet with parents, I try and utilize the same thing so I can ask them questions about their student. What are they seeing at home? If we're seeing a decline in self efficacy, which is one of the things that is on the survey, also self management and sense of belonging. If I'm seeing declining scores in those surveys over the years, I can have those conversations and all educators can have those conversations with the parents to try and get a better idea of what's going on. And then also using the playbook to how do we start to make change? I mean, unlike the insight button, it's not that magic button. I push the button and now the kid is going to start going up again. No, but how do we start putting those interventions into place? We use it for a multiple of things. We had our district Attendance meeting last week and we'd meet twice a month for these meetings.

Lawrence Sanchez:

And we're not where I want us to be because I'm sure this wasn't your intention when you developed Panorama, but what it's become is a data warehouse for us. It's a one stop shop. It really is. And so it has our data. Well, if we're going to do that, then we should keep all data that we can within Panorama. And so another one, I think the intervention piece, even though you can do attendance interventions, behavior interventions, I think the main reason that people use it is for academic interventions, but we should be using it for attendance interventions because again, it's shared with every adult that has access to that student, that is involved with that student. And I don't like paper. And so when we keep these on paper, then I have to go see you.

Lawrence Sanchez:

Aaron, if, let's say you're the. If I'm the principal and you're the teacher, I have to go see you. Hey, what's going on here? Oh, let me grab that paper. And here it is. And it's live for that minute. And then something could change. And then I have to go back to you again. When we have the data shared in this manner, it's always life and we're not dependent upon each other.

Lawrence Sanchez:

I can look at that data anytime I want. We even keep. I'll tell you another story. You tell me when to stop, because I can tell stories.

Aaron Feuer:

I love this, this terrific.

Lawrence Sanchez:

We were meeting with our state, the New Mexico Public Education Department, the director of the attendance office, and she was just checking with us to see how our plan's going this year. You know, we're a quarter of the way in and asking us questions. And one of the things that was in our attendance plan is that we will be utilizing Panorama. And so she was asking us questions about Panorama. And so here I go again. Because if you guys can't tell, I love Panorama. So I'm, I'm championing it. And until people tell me to stop, I don't stop.

Lawrence Sanchez:

And she was like, that's so cool you're doing this. So parent phone calls. When our teachers make parent phone calls, please log it in Panorama. And that may seem like, oh, you guys are micromanaging. You're trying to play big Brother and keep an eye on. Are we doing our job? No. Because when that parent gets upset and calls me either as a principal or as a superintendent, first thing I can do is look up Panorama. And when they say, and the teacher doesn't return my calls and the teacher doesn't do this or the principal doesn't, I can look up Panorama and say, it looks like they are returning your calls.

Lawrence Sanchez:

Oh, well, I forgot about that. It holds everybody accountable is where I'm going with this. And so when I was telling the lady from the state about this, she goes, wow, that's pretty cool. She goes, would you be willing to do a training for us to help other schools in your region learn how to use Panorama? Of course. I mean, it makes life easier. I don't know if I answered your question, but that's some of the ways.

Aaron Feuer:

No, it's what I find interesting as you're talking about this is I hear this combination of AI for efficiency and a very human version of school. And I know a lot of folks, myself included, you know, I don't say worry, but think about what a future where AI is in school, how that looks. And I'm interested in how you think about driving AI and technology for efficiency while also keeping the human side of education front and center.

Lawrence Sanchez:

It's interesting that you asked that because everybody has suggestions on how school districts should use AI and at any given time I could pull up suggestions from everybody, but nobody has told us what works best for Balloon Consolidated Schools. And that's what we're studying right now. We actually have a committee where we're pulling in all these suggestions, and some is good, some is bad. What fits Belen Consolidated Schools. And we are going to come up with, I mean, it'll be a living document, but this is how AI works for our school, our students, our teachers. We're starting off with, how do we effectively teach students how to use AI? Morally is not the right term, but I can't think of the other term I want to use. And that. That's where it starts.

Lawrence Sanchez:

But then we go to that. We have to teach our teachers the same thing. You know, one of the things that I. I read about, I just read an article yesterday how this sudden expansion of AI is making it hard in the classroom because kids can use it to cheat. And what really struck home with me, because I had a conversation with our high school administration team a couple weeks ago and they were explaining the same things to me and they're going to go back to paper. So think about this. We have got technology in place to make everything easier. But to prevent the improper use of the technology, we're thinking about going back to paper.

Lawrence Sanchez:

And this article was talking about a teacher in Los Angeles, a school in Los Angeles. I don't remember, I know it's on the west coast on where they're going to start using paper again to prevent students from using their Chromebooks or whatever their device is to access AI. I guess one of the complaints was I won't call them out, but a popular browser, they have an AI component that using it, the kids could take a picture, throw it into the. Into the browser, and the solution is there. And so how do we teach them to use it appropriately, effectively, because it does have its use. Our belief is if we're not careful about that, we're going to create a monster that we won't be able to get back under control very easily. And so we're being cautious, not saying no to AI, working with our teachers first before we open it, make it wide open for our students.

Aaron Feuer:

I appreciate how intentional you've been about this, and sort of the intentionality is the word that comes to mind as you're planning this rollout. I'm curious from a leadership perspective. I was struck by something you said earlier about that you were leading a training for your educators on this. And I can feel there's some there's leading from the front that you're doing with your folks. And I'm curious what leadership has looked like for you in this moment and as AI in this moment evolved, how you define strong leadership and education.

Lawrence Sanchez:

So the reason I lead from the front, I like that term. When I was a teacher, I used to be a CTE teacher, career technical education, and I taught technology. And so for me, this is natural. When I first became a principal, and I'm going to tell a long story to get to my point. When I first became principal, all that stuff that Panorama does, I created these massive spreadsheets. I still have them. I go back and look at them fondly sometimes to just appreciate the work that I put in so that I could create what you guys are doing, because I believe that that helps me lead. So when I was a principal, if I brought a student in to talk to them, regardless of the, the reason I was bringing them in, I always went to my spreadsheet and asked them, are you aware of your performance? Are you aware of your behavior? Are you aware of your attendance? And so that we could start to get a picture, it helped me.

Lawrence Sanchez:

I was at a training, a workshop, I guess probably four years ago in Albuquerque, in October, another one of the Panorama schools in the state Gadsden Municipal Schools was doing a presentation. I said, oh my goodness, that's what I've been looking for. And we started the process. So that allows me to take my belief of how we should lead schools and teach the principles, help the teachers learn how to use it to guide their classrooms. And it gives us points that we should start at. It's not the whole picture, but it gives me areas we could start at. So I was at a site this morning at a staff meeting to recognize the school because they recently, last week, they were named a spotlight school, which means they're in the top 25% of performance in New Mexico. And so we were there, and the principal talked about, okay, great, we got here.

Lawrence Sanchez:

This is where we need to go. And he talked about, hey, I sent you your Panorama data. Look at it. Use it to get better. Use it so that you can inform that change in your classroom. All it tells us is where to start. Doesn't tell us the whole story. It's data.

Lawrence Sanchez:

But it's a lot better than trying to figure out, where do I start?

Aaron Feuer:

A hundred percent. And I'm, I, I'm smiling as you're describing the spreadsheets that you were creating as a principal. My, my grandfather was an elementary principal for 25 years, and he just said, you know, God made me a principal. I'm not, you know, that this is where I'm meant to be. And he, you know, generations before you were a principal, he was, he was doing this on paper, on the walls of the staff lounge before spreadsheets were even something a school would contemplate. You know, a bigger question here as you look ahead. I appreciate the example you shared of cheating concerns and handwriting, because in a sense, it's important, but it's also not the future that I think you or I want to drive to. And so if you look ahead, like, what is the future that you want to drive to for what school looks like as we see greater AI adoption.

Lawrence Sanchez:

Real soon, that if you're tempted to go outside of your lane, the guard rails are going to keep you in your lane. The band aid is using paper and pencil, because just like the AI companies are innovating with AI, so are the other folks on how we can make it not safer, in some cases, safer, so that they're using it with fidelity and validity. And so we, we're working on that, too, to where we'll never stop the homework cheating. If you want to cheat, you're going to cheat. But where we can stop it is the cheating that's going on on the tests that count. And so using technology, I call them kiosks, that once the student is in that testing kiosk, they can't exit and go use something else. And we already don't allow cell phones in that testing environment. So those guardrails make it difficult to cheat.

Lawrence Sanchez:

Now, if you're going to cheat on your homework, okay, you're going to cheat on your homework. That's up to you. We can't prevent that because it's happening at home. And so we also want to look on how do we help our parents become better understanding. We want to build that environment where they can learn to use it the proper way. And that's going to take time. We're going to, it's going to take the training of our teachers so that then our students are trained. And also, we can't do this without the parents help.

Lawrence Sanchez:

We can't, we can't educate students without the parents help, whatever it is. And so how, how are we going to do that part too and get parental involvement?

Aaron Feuer:

I really appreciate those connections. And so maybe I, if we pull through some threads here, I appreciate, you know, you've talked about how, you know, you across the district and folks have been using AI to drive efficiency to better support students, and you've kind of referenced the feeling that these are my words, not yours, but sort of, we're in the early days of this journey. Where do you see the next big opportunity when it comes to AI Data?

Lawrence Sanchez:

Data. And so, and I've asked you guys, and I talked to John Kennedy about this and he's helped me a little bit. But being able to take our data and I, I can do it to a certain extent. You guys have made some good changes, that helps me, but it's not, it's not there yet. To where I can take, let's call it our summative testing data and start to get, run it through AI and start to get that feedback. And again, not giving me the answers, telling me where I need to look, help me spot those trends. Can I do it? Yes. I can't do it as fast as AI can.

Lawrence Sanchez:

No way. And so when we're able to start looking at that and being able to affect the classroom. So here's something that I do like that if we can make it bigger, I guess so. I know that with Solara, I can go through and I can say, hey, I've got these kids and I can create. I call. You guys use a different term. I call the groups that you can create in Panorama. I call them dynamic groups.

Lawrence Sanchez:

Dynamic when you set the filters and they change based on the filters or static groups. When I'm saying, these kids are in this group. And so I could take my group and go to Solara and say, hey, these students are struggling in these areas. Help me find interventions in the playbook that I can then start to, to introduce to the students to try and build that up. I can also then take other data. We call them common formative assessments and they're not part of the data we're reporting in Panorama. They don't stick out. They're just a grade in Panorama.

Lawrence Sanchez:

But I could take that performance and with those kids, put it in Solara and say, what are you seeing? And John showed me how to do that. And that's pretty cool. And saying that works, that works for. At the classroom level, it works at the school level. I'm looking for that thing that works at the district level that say, hey, we've got kids that are experiencing this across the district. As you said, 3600 kids as we're preparing to assist our teachers. What are some interventions, whether they're in playbook or not, that we can recommend and show them things that may have effect and I don't know, it may not be something that Panorama is looking at. And so it may be that we're going to have to go, not leave Panorama.

Lawrence Sanchez:

I'm not leaving Panorama. We're just going to have to.

Aaron Feuer:

I'll tease. It's coming. It's coming. Not to sneak any news, but it's coming.

Lawrence Sanchez:

That's awesome. So here's something else. We're not started yet because I just found out about it and it's not your playbook. It starts with a P. We just bought it. But what it does is it helps at the high school level, especially determine. I call them grade checks, but it helps us look at the transcripts and determine are kids on the right path to achieve graduation. You guys are also including the CTE Pathways in there, which again makes it seem our two teams are working together right now to map the fields together.

Lawrence Sanchez:

And I'm hoping I haven't gotten an update recently, but I'm hoping we'll be on track to do a soft rollout of this in either late January or early February. I just don't remember what I bought, but I'm very happy with it.

Aaron Feuer:

Pathways.

Lawrence Sanchez:

Pathways. Thank you. I knew it started with a P.

Aaron Feuer:

It has alliteration, right? Panorama. Pathways. I just want to say thank you. This has been a terrific kind of wide ranging conversation and I just, I appreciate you for talking about this. You know, learning about the work that you're doing in BCS and how. There's a thread that I pull in this conversation from your leadership at a district level that sets the tone about both leaning into this work and doing so. I think responsibly is the word I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about the trust that you've built.

Aaron Feuer:

I'm thinking about how much listening you've done across the district and that everything in this conversation has come back to how do we help educators meet student needs? And I'm just reflecting back that everything you shared has come from, we want to better meet student needs. How do we make technology our tool to do that? This has been a tremendous conversation. Lawrence, I just want to thank you for being with us today.

Lawrence Sanchez:

Well, thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to tell our story because I think we're doing good things here. And one last thing. You get what we're trying to do. Our board has adopted, it's called Student Outcome Focused Governance. And so everything that we do should be based on how our students are doing. And that has really helped us focus. So even with AI, how are we going to help improve student outcomes? And it does.

Lawrence Sanchez:

It does.

Aaron Feuer:

Honestly, if we could replicate what y' all are doing across the country, we would see some terrific things.

Lawrence Sanchez:

Well, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Aaron Feuer:

So thank you, Lawrence. And to everyone listening, thank you for joining us on the Leading and Learning with AI podcast. Please follow along for more stories with educators and leaders reimagining what school can be and if we can again see just a little recreation of what y' all are doing in Berlin, across the country and where you're taking this work, we got great things in store, so we'll see y' all next time.