Rochester parent builds AI chatbot to answer questions about school district’s $19M referendum

Rochester Public Schools is turning to an artificial intelligence chatbot to get information out about its $19.4 million operating referendum.

The VoteSmart RPS chatbot, unveiled Tuesday by the district, is capable of analyzing loads of district content to formulate real-time responses to questions about the referendum. The district is hoping the tool will help cut down the amount of time it takes voters to get accurate information about the district’s plans.

One example: Which area in the referendum would receive the most funding?

The answer, according to the district chatbot: “28% of funding will support services that strengthen student wellbeing and mental health.”

The chatbot was developed by Mani Thavasi, a district parent who is also CEO of Rochester-based technology company TRBHI. Thavasi said the idea for the tool came from his own experience researching the referendum.

“As a technologist, I was looking at all of these pieces of information and it was a bit overwhelming in terms of putting these pieces together and making an informed decision,” Thavasi said.

Thavasi’s company spent two weeks developing the chatbot, which was provided to the district at no cost. Unlike other chatbots like ChatGPT that pull from a variety of sources to generate responses, the district tool relies exclusively on presentations and other official communications from the district.

“We wanted to ensure it’s very reliable content to begin with, so that helped us to set those guardrails in terms of how the responses would be constructed,” Thavasi said.

This November marks the district’s second attempt at getting an operating referendum passed after last year’s request failed by 318 votes.

District officials say the referendum is needed to avoid cuts to areas including mental health services and vocational training programs. If the referendum fails, the district would also close three elementary schools and raise class sizes by three students across the board.