Boards, staff and families are already asking Montessori leaders what AI means for their schools. The harder question is not what AI can do, but what a school should ask it to do, and what should always stay human. In this session, Tim Seldin, President of the Montessori Foundation, joined Navneet Rastogi, Founder and CEO of illumine, to talk about why growth makes leadership harder, where AI can create real capacity, and where it should never go. This is the written recap. The full recording is at the top of this page.
Speakers
Tim Seldin, President, The Montessori Foundation
Navneet Rastogi, Founder and CEO, illumine
Best for
Montessori heads of school, owners and operations leads weighing up AI
Session length
69 minutes
In this recap
What should stay human, four areas where AI creates capacity, a checklist for choosing tools and seven questions answered live
Key takeaways
- Most attendees were already using AI or actively evaluating it, even though many Montessori families and staff remain wary of it.
- Growth multiplies paperwork, compliance, training and tools. Leaders' time does not grow with it.
- AI should support the adults, not teach young children. In Tim's words, children still learn by doing.
- Treat AI output as a first draft. Nothing should reach a family without a person reviewing it.
- The four areas where AI is already creating capacity are enrollment, billing and finance, learning documentation and family communication, and leadership reporting.
- Choose tools by the problem you want solved, starting with data security, not by the promise of AI.
Where Montessori schools are with AI today
The opening poll surprised both speakers. Around half of attendees said they were already using AI in daily operations, and around 45 percent said they were actively evaluating options.
That is not the picture Tim usually sees. He hears a lot of resistance to AI from schools and from Montessori families, and he understands why. Some worry about surveillance and where children's faces end up. Others fear that schools will put children in front of laptops and let AI replace teachers. Tim called that fear understandable but misguided. His own view is that AI is simply a tool, and one he has chosen to embrace.
The growth paradox
Tim described growth in many forms: schools expanding, opening second campuses and forming networks, and Montessori programs now running from infant care to high school. Whatever the size, he said, the paperwork, compliance and reporting load has become overwhelming, and growth brings it all at once.
More compliance
Accurate records of who is on campus, who dropped a child off and who picked them up, alongside growing state reporting requirements.
More training
Staff turnover means constant onboarding, and there are not enough trained, experienced Montessori teachers to meet demand.
More tools
Many schools Tim and Navneet speak to use between five and ten applications across the office and classrooms, and they do not talk to each other.
More anxious families
Families are more stressed and more demanding than before, and they expect fast, frequent communication.
Tim gave the example of a small school he was working with that has almost 50 employees for 150 children. Computers were supposed to free up time for children, he said, yet many leaders still spend their Sundays tagging which children appear in which photos. Navneet summed up the paradox with a line from the session's slides:
The organization grows. Time to lead does not.
An attendee added that public Montessori schools in Texas face heavy state accountability requirements and more technology requirements, on less funding than traditional districts.
What should stay human
Tim uses AI heavily, including a personal AI agent he has trained. He compared it to a very bright graduate student: a great start, but one you always have to check and correct. He would never want a teacher at 5:30 p.m. to let AI write a note to a parent and send it without review. He also warned that AI tends to flatter, so you have to set it up to give honest, critical feedback.
Navneet's line was that AI should never sit between the educator and the child. It can offer options, but the decision stays with the person, and it cannot record an observation on a teacher's behalf.
AI assists
Let AI help with
- First drafts of messages, reports and policies
- Structuring a teacher's observation notes
- Answering calls and capturing inquiries after hours
- Organizing documents, such as curriculum plans
- Pulling reports and spotting patterns in your numbers
- Translation for families who speak other languages
People decide
Keep with your team
- Teaching young children, who learn by doing
- Recording what a teacher actually observed
- Reviewing anything before it reaches a family
- Decisions, including what to do with AI's suggestions
- Tours, conversations and relationships with families
Four areas where AI creates capacity
A poll asked where schools lose the most time. Enrollment follow-ups came out on top. One attendee pointed out that communication was missing from the list, and Tim agreed it belongs there. The session then walked through four areas.
Enrollment and family inquiries
Parents expect an immediate response, and they tend to go with whoever engages first. Tim's standard is to answer within three rings. An AI agent can answer after hours or when nobody is at the desk, so the team can focus on tours and personal conversations.
Billing and finance
Tim listed the questions leaders struggle to answer: is the middle school losing money, does the summer camp break even, and how much attrition should we expect next year? Answering them usually takes an in-house CPA or a very sharp bookkeeper.
Learning documentation and family communication
Parents often get random photos and a list of lesson names they do not understand. AI can recognize children in photos, group them and draft a narrative a teacher edits, and turn a few spoken sentences into a clear observation.
Leadership
Tim said many schools are flying blind: they know what is in the bank but not what the next three months look like. AI reporting can answer those questions on demand.
Tim also noted that illumine integrates with QuickBooks for accounting. See childcare billing software and the QuickBooks integration.
How to choose an AI tool
Navneet shared how he advises leaders to make these decisions. Social media is full of claims that an AI tool changed someone's life overnight, and he suggested ignoring that noise.
- Start with safety and security. Know what data a tool can access and how it is protected.
- Be clear about your goal. Start from the problem you have, not from wanting to use AI.
- Look for repeatable work. If a task repeats and does not need a person in the middle, it may be worth automating, or eliminating.
- Use AI to organize and structure. It is good at turning notes, plans and numbers into something clearer, and at spotting patterns.
- Keep student information out of general tools. High-level questions do not need personal data.
One attendee shared that they gave a general AI assistant their curriculum documents for a three-year cycle, and it combined them into one color-coded plan that now helps the team plan lessons.
What it looks like in practice
Navneet showed four examples in illumine:
- An AI enrollment agent. He played a recorded call in which the agent answered for a school, asked about the child, and offered tour times. Each call is recorded, summarized, tagged with the caller's sentiment and attached to the inquiry in the CRM. See the AI enrollment agent.
- AI-built forms. Forms can be created from a prompt or a photo of an existing form. Preloaded state forms, such as for New York, Florida and California, fill in details parents have already given. Read about the AI form generator.
- AI daily reports. Teachers add photos and voice or typed notes through the day. The AI tags children, groups photos by activity and drafts a narrative for the teacher to review, edit, translate and send. Faces of children whose families have not given consent can be blurred, and photos with no child in them are flagged. See AI daily reports.
- A billing assistant. Leaders can ask questions such as "what are my outstanding invoices?" in plain language, pin the answer to their dashboard, schedule it, or export it as a spreadsheet.
Questions from the session
Where is the line between AI supporting the adult and AI teaching the child, especially under six?
An attendee building a Montessori program for three- and four-year-olds inside a tech-forward school network asked this. Tim said he is not impressed by claims about AI teaching young children directly. Children learn by doing and through hands-on work. He uses AI himself to learn, but would not put a young child in front of it. His interest is in helping teachers get more done, not in teaching children AI.
Does illumine have Montessori-specific features?
Navneet said yes: illumine supports Montessori schools with record-keeping and observation features, with AI built into the platform. Tim added that schools can use it as their Montessori record-keeping and reporting system. See Montessori record keeping.
Can a family opt out of face recognition completely?
Navneet explained that it can be switched off for a child whose family has not given consent. In that case the AI does not process that child's face, and their photos are shared individually rather than tagged in group photos. He described it as a trade-off between automation and the extra manual work that full opt-outs require.
How is children's and families' data protected?
Navneet said customer data is never used to train illumine's AI features, which are built on mock data. The AI does not read your database directly. It translates a plain-language question into a query that retrieves only what was asked for, with read-only access. Where large language models are used, such as to describe what children are doing in a photo, the data sent is kept to a minimum and does not include personal details. See how illumine approaches child privacy and protection.
Which AI model powers the platform?
Navneet explained that it changes. Models are improving quickly, so illumine chooses the best-performing option for each use case against industry benchmarks, and that choice may change over time.
Can illumine help a new or small school that is just starting out?
Navneet said yes. A new school can use it to capture every inquiry and personalize communication with families, with support from the illumine team as the school grows.
Is this webinar selling software?
Tim answered this one directly. The session is sponsored by illumine, and he said he is happy to say he thinks the software is worth a look. His reason for joining, he said, is to share information school leaders will find useful.
Resources mentioned
- An ebook on AI and the future of Montessori leadership, published by illumine in collaboration with The Montessori Foundation, shared with attendees ahead of its public release. Read the related report, What Will Montessori Leadership Look Like in 2030?
- The first session in this series, on rethinking Montessori operations. Watch Rethinking Montessori.
- The Montessori Foundation's weekly webinars, including Tim's Tuesday sessions on enrollment.
What to do next
- Ask your team where they lose the most time each week, and start there.
- Agree which tasks AI may help with and which always stay with a person, and write it down.
- Make it a rule that nothing AI drafts reaches a family without review.
- Check how any tool you use handles children's data, photos and consent.
- Pick one area, such as after-hours inquiries or daily reports, and try it for a term.
To see how illumine supports Montessori schools end to end, explore Montessori school software or book a live demo.