ETSU and Kingsport City Schools Win $50,000 in SCORE's Inaugural AI Innovation Fund

East Tennessee State University and Kingsport City Schools were selected as recipients of SCORE's inaugural AI Innovation Fund, with their joint project receiving $50,000. The $450,000 fund supports educator-led projects exploring responsible, student-centered uses of artificial intelligence in education. The project expands a leadership-first AI capacity-building model to assistant principals, instructional coaches, teacher leaders and educator preparation faculty through hands-on training and guided professional learning. The announcement came during SCORE's statewide symposium, "AI in K-12 Education: Keeping Students at the Center."

This is a concrete move by a statewide education organization to use funding and peer learning networks to bring AI into school leadership. Recipients include a university college of education and K-12 districts, directly affecting teacher preparation and school AI adoption conditions. The project emphasizes equipping adults such as assistant principals and instructional coaches with practical AI fluency and ethical frameworks before reaching classrooms through school-based expert networks. Effects require later implementation evidence; SCORE says it will share lessons and findings, but no independent research or quantitative results exist yet. Nine Tennessee recipient organizations will test projects over 12 months in instruction, student advising, career pathway planning and AI literacy, creating comparable practice samples. The ETSU and KCS partnership embeds AI training in educator preparation and school management, potentially changing how teachers and principals in the region prepare for AI.