Regional specialty centers · Richmond metro
One spine for every student. One capstone per center.
An AI enrichment and capstone program for the specialty centers, magnets, and career centers of the Richmond region. The enrichment layer is identical everywhere. The capstone is built around what your center already teaches — and your center runs it.
13 track pathways · 13 full brief banks live · Capstone Pack instruments with purchase
Start here
Curriculum or capstone — pick the door that fits
Looking for a full AI curriculum by grade band? That is AI Foundations — classroom units, teacher editions, and site licenses. This page is not that product.
Want capstone work your students can finish and defend in the slot you already have — AP Research, a center senior project, CTE completer, or a taught unit that ends in real student work? Start with a free specialty brief bank matched to what your center already teaches. Students ship an artifact and a write-up a director can score; you name the sandbox and run two checkpoints.
We are not a staffing service. We do not recruit, screen, or match mentors, and we are not on showcase night — your division owns those child-safety decisions. When you want the printable operating kit (rubric, five C’s evidence file, mentor briefing, judge scorecard), that is Capstone Pack: optional, after you have tried a free bank.
Next steps
Try free, then one question
- Open a free brief bank for your track — start with Applied ML or AI Security if you are still choosing.
- Share one brief with a teacher and see whether the work is real.
- If your center already has a project slot this year, answer one question — not a purchase. Capstone Pack quotes come later, only if you want the printable rubric kit, evidence file, mentor briefing, and judge scorecard.
Layer one · every student
The AI Common Spine
A twelve-week, sixty-hour enrichment module that drops into a course the school already runs. Identical in every building, so the region shares a vocabulary — and so a student who transfers between centers does not restart.
No new course
It rides inside an existing period
Co-taught into English, history, science, or a CTE course. No master-schedule fight, no new staffing line, no board vote. That is deliberate — it is the only version of this that a school can say yes to in August.
Standards
Mapped to the 2024 Computer Science SOL
Anchored in the Impacts of Computing strand and the Computer Science Foundations and Principles courses — the standards Virginia requires divisions to have fully implemented by this school year. Every lesson carries its own alignment.
The five C’s
Evidence, not assertion
Virginia now requires every graduate to demonstrate critical thinking, creative thinking, collaboration, communication, and citizenship. The Spine produces a per-student evidence file for that clause, which most schools are currently documenting by hand.
Layer two · your center
13 capstone tracks
Each track takes the AI question into the domain your students chose in eighth grade. All 13 tracks have full free brief banks today — open the one that matches your center.
Applied ML Systems
Build, evaluate, and ship a working model against a real client brief.
Data collection and labeling, baseline vs. model, evaluation beyond accuracy, deployment constraints, and a written model card. Students finish with a running artifact and documentation a professional would accept.
Information technology, computer science, and innovative technology centers
Open brief bank →Adversarial ML & AI Security
Attack the model, then defend it.
Prompt injection, data poisoning, model extraction, and jailbreak taxonomies — paired with detection, red-team reporting, and AI-assisted defense. Maps cleanly onto existing Security+ and Virginia Cyber Range work.
Cybersecurity centers and cyber CTE programs
Open brief bank →Model-in-the-Loop Engineering
Where a model belongs inside a physical system — and where it does not.
Sensor data, predictive maintenance, tolerance and failure analysis, and the safety case for handing a decision to a model. Students produce a design review that treats the model as a component with a failure mode.
Engineering academies and STEM centers
Open brief bank →Clinical AI & Diagnostic Bias
Read an algorithm the way you would read a lab result.
Sensitivity, specificity, base rates, and why a model that is 95% accurate can still be dangerous. Students audit a published diagnostic model for population bias and write a clinical caution sheet.
Health science, medical sciences, and health professions centers
Open brief bank →Synthetic Media & Provenance
Prove where a piece of media came from.
Detection limits, content credentials and provenance standards, disclosure norms, and newsroom policy. Students ship a verified package plus the AI standards document their own newsroom would adopt.
Mass communications, journalism, and media relations centers
Open brief bank →Generative Media Studio
Make the work, then defend how it was made.
Training data and consent, copyright and derivative work, artist attribution, and disclosure. Every portfolio piece ships with a tooling statement — the habit the industry is converging on.
Arts centers and arts-and-technology governor's schools
Open brief bank →Algorithmic Policy & Governance
Regulate a system you have actually taken apart.
Risk scoring, disparate impact, procurement rules, and international AI governance. Students run a mock rulemaking or treaty negotiation and produce a policy brief with an implementation cost.
Leadership, international relations, government, and social sciences centers
Open brief bank →AI Venture Build
A real company, with real unit economics, that happens to use a model.
Problem interviews, wedge selection, inference cost modeling, pricing, and the pitch. Fits an existing entrepreneurship competition or expo, and lines up with an Entrepreneurship work-based learning experience.
Entrepreneurship academies and business administration college academies
Open brief bank →Machines & Meaning
What a language model reveals about language.
Authorship and voice, corpus methods for the humanities, the history of mechanical reasoning, and what gets lost in a token. Students produce a research essay with a computational component.
Humanities centers, IB programmes, and language and global citizenship centers
Open brief bank →Assistive & Accessible AI
Design for the person the default model was not built for.
Speech and motion models, augmentative communication, reading and executive-function supports, and accessibility testing with real users. Students co-design with the people who will use the tool.
Education and human development centers, therapies centers, and specialized schools
Open brief bank →Environment, Energy & Compute
The data center is now a local environmental question.
Remote sensing and climate models, plus the water, land, and grid cost of inference — using the facilities being built in this region as the case study. Students produce a siting analysis.
Environmental studies and sustainability centers
Open brief bank →AI-Assisted Trades & Credentials
The model as a tool on the bench, not a subject in a book.
Diagnostic assistants, documentation, estimating, and quality control in automotive, HVAC, electrical, health support, and culinary contexts — stacked onto a Board-approved industry credential.
Advanced career education centers and technical centers
Open brief bank →Venture & Private Capital
Underwrite the company, then audit the model that helped you do it.
Cap tables, dilution, liquidation preferences, fund math, and the investment committee memo — on fictional companies and funds, with every number re-derived in a free calculator. Students use AI as a junior analyst, build small stub-only analyst tools, and audit the failure modes. An investment study, never an investment.
Business, finance, and entrepreneurship academies; economics and AP Statistics programs; independent study
Open brief bank →Fit
Who this is for
This works when a center already has somewhere to put the work. If all four of these are true, the conversation is short:
- A culminating requirement already exists — a senior capstone, senior project, AP Research, PLTW Capstone, an IB Extended Essay or CAS project, or a CTE completer sequence.
- A teacher owns it and is currently inventing the projects and the rubric themselves, every year.
- Your division already runs a volunteer screening pipeline — which every division in this region does, because it must.
- The domain is one of the 13 tracks above. If it is not, say so and we will tell you honestly whether it is a fit.
We keep a working map of Richmond-metro specialty centers, host schools, and the track each one most likely matches. It is not published, because a center’s programs change faster than a web page and we would rather be corrected in private than be wrong in public. Ask and we will send the entry for your division.
Credit
Three lanes, and one thing we will not claim
A center picks a lane based on how much lead time it has. Most start in Lane A in year one and move to Lane B or C in year two.
Use the capstone slot you already have
Fastest — no new approval
AP Research, PLTW Capstone, an IB Extended Essay or CAS project, a center senior capstone, or a school senior project. The credit already exists; for every live track we supply a published brief bank, and Capstone Pack buyers get the rubric and evidence template. AP Research in particular has no prescribed content, so an AI topic creates no curricular conflict.
What it needs from you: Center director sign-off only.
High-quality work-based learning
One semester of lead time
Internship and Entrepreneurship are both High-Quality Work-Based Learning types under VDOE's current framework, and both are credit-bearing. An HQWBL placement also scores on the Employment leg of the 3E Readiness framework — the same experience counts twice, once on the transcript and once on the school's accountability profile. Our briefs are written so the work fits an Internship or an Entrepreneurship experience specifically.
What it needs from you: Your division's work-based learning coordinator, a training agreement, and a signed training plan. The division places and supervises the student. Confirm the current hour minimum with your coordinator — VDOE's published guidance and division practice do not currently agree.
Dual enrollment alignment
Two semesters of lead time
The Virginia Community College System already carries an AI course family: ITE 135 Artificial Intelligence Awareness, ITE 142 Introduction to AI Tools for Business, ITE 153 AI Ethics and Governance, and ITE 228 Applied AI for Business — three credits each, all four confirmed on the Brightpoint schedule. ITE 135 + 142 + 153 is nine transferable credits, which is exactly the benchmark a Governor's STEM Academy graduate must meet.
What it needs from you: A dual enrollment contract between your division and the college, and an instructor who meets SACSCOC and VCCS credentialing — generally 18 graduate semester hours in the discipline. We supply the standards crosswalk between our track and the course outcomes. We do not file the articulation, and we do not credential instructors; the college and the division own both.
This program does not produce verified credit
We want to be direct about this, because vendors are not always. In Virginia a verified credit comes from an end-of-course SOL test, a Board-approved substitute test, or a locally awarded verified credit in English, mathematics, laboratory science, or history. There is no computer science SOL test. There is no computer science or AI entry on the substitute test list. And for every student currently enrolled, an industry credential no longer converts into a verified credit either.
What this program does produce is standard credit, satisfaction of the graduation requirement that every student complete a dual enrollment or advanced course, a high-quality work-based learning experience, or a Board-approved credential — and documented evidence of the five C’s. Anyone promising you verified credit for an AI course is either mistaken or hoping you will not check.
One related correction we make often: under VDOE’s framework there are exactly six qualifying High-Quality Work-Based Learning types, and mentorship is not one of them. Job shadowing, externships, co-ops, and service learning are not either. When this program touches HQWBL it does so through Internship or Entrepreneurship, which do qualify.
The boundary
What ships, and what stays yours
This is a product you run, not a service we perform. That line is drawn where child safety is, and it does not move.
The brief banks (13 tracks — available now)
25 Applied ML Systems, 12 Adversarial ML & AI Security, 12 Model-in-the-Loop Engineering, 12 Clinical AI & Diagnostic Bias, 12 Synthetic Media & Provenance, 12 Generative Media Studio, 12 Algorithmic Policy & Governance, 12 AI Venture Build, 12 Machines & Meaning, 12 Assistive & Accessible AI, 12 Environment, Energy & Compute, 12 AI-Assisted Trades & Credentials, 12 Venture & Private Capital — each with public sources or lab constraints, expected failure modes, a definition of done, and a five C's mapping. Every brief has its own single-brief PDF. Confirm sources, sandbox, shop, PHI, consent, and copyright rules before you assign. All 13 specialty tracks have a full free brief bank today.
The rubric and the evidence file
A six-dimension scoring rubric a center director can defend at a parent conference, plus a per-student evidence template documenting the five C's demonstration Virginia now requires of every graduate — the clause most schools are currently satisfying by hand. Ships with Capstone Pack; not a free standalone download today.
The mentor briefing kit
A one-page role description, a first-conversation script, a boundaries sheet, and a feedback form — written for an advisory mentor who reviews work and never supervises a student alone. You hand this to mentors your division has already cleared. Ships with Capstone Pack.
The AUP and policy pack
Acceptable-use language, student data privacy mapping, and transparency disclosures your board can adopt against the AI guidance Virginia now requires divisions to align with. Ships with Capstone Pack.
The judge scorecard
A calibrated scorecard and a fifteen-minute judge orientation, so a panel of volunteers scores consistently and the result survives a second look. Ships with Capstone Pack.
The showcase run-of-show
A full playbook for the May exhibition: timeline, room plan, judge brief, family communications, and a press note. You run the evening; the playbook means you are not designing it from scratch. Ships with Capstone Pack.
What your division keeps
- Sourcing your own mentors, and screening them through the volunteer pipeline your division already operates.
- Supervising students. Every mentor interaction happens under your supervision and your division's policies.
- Placing and monitoring any work-based learning experience, through your WBL coordinator.
- Running the showcase evening itself, using our playbook.
- Awarding the credit and signing the transcript.
This is not us being cautious. Chesterfield, for one, requires anyone working with students in a mentoring capacity to clear the division’s own central application and background check, and will not accept a vendor’s screening in its place. The national standard for mentoring programs assigns full liability for screening and placement to whoever brokers the match. A vendor who offers to hand you pre-vetted mentors is either not reading those rules or is asking you to carry a risk you have not priced.
Implementation
Built around the budget calendar, not against it
Most divisions in this region approved the current fiscal year’s budget in March 2026. A conversation starting now reaches FY28, and pretending otherwise wastes your year and ours.
Aug — Oct 2026
Read a live brief bank
Free, no contract, no purchase order, no data privacy agreement — it is a document, not a system. Run any of the 13 published banks past your teachers and see whether the work is real.
Oct — Dec 2026
Common Spine, and the budget ask
Where a school licenses the Spine, the enrichment module drops into one existing course with no master-schedule change. This is also the window to write the Capstone Pack into the FY28 request.
Jan — Mar 2027
Your mentor pipeline, your timeline
The division recruits and clears advisory mentors through its existing volunteer process. We are not in this step, by design. Board budget approval typically lands in this window.
Mar — May 2027
Pilot cohort and showcase
A center can run a first cohort on a free published brief bank (any of the 13 live tracks). Public showcase in May, run by the school. This is the artifact that unlocks everything after it.
Jul 2027
Purchase order for FY28
The Capstone Pack starts when the fiscal year does. This is the cycle an August 2026 conversation can actually reach — the previous fiscal year's budget closed in March 2026.
Fall 2027 onward
Full track
Where a center wants it, the Governor's STEM Academy proposal goes to the Board — that filing must land at least eight months before opening.
Pricing
Flat, per site. Not per seat, not per student.
AI Common Spine
Included
in a School or Division license
The universal enrichment layer for every student in the building, not only the center cohort. School license $2,500/yr covers unlimited teachers at one school; Division license from $12,000/yr covers the whole division, and the final Division price is confirmed at quote based on division size.
See AI Foundations license tiersCapstone Pack — School
$3,500
per school, per year
Includes all 13 published brief banks plus Capstone Pack instruments (rubric, five C's evidence template, mentor briefing kit, AUP pack, judge scorecard, showcase run-of-show). Brief banks stay free to read; the pack is the printable operating kit. On top of a $2,500 School license that is $6,000 all in.
Request a quoteCapstone Pack — Division
$9,000
per division, per year
The same pack for every specialty center in the division, with one renewal and one invoice. Worth doing once a center has run a cohort and a division champion is ready to carry it through a competitive quote process.
Talk it throughAll 13 published brief banks are free
Not a trial and not gated behind a signature. Every brief in a live bank has its own page and its own PDF, and the full bank PDF is on that track’s page. The bank page leads with a few featured briefs; the rest are listed on the same page, each with a link. Confirm sources, sandbox, and shop rules before you assign.
Capstone Pack instruments (rubric, evidence file, mentor kit, judge scorecard, showcase run-of-show) ship with a paid pack — we would rather show the real briefs than invent social proof or imply unpublished kits are already free downloads.
Northstar Academy and other specialized programs are served at cost, permanently. Accessibility work should not carry a margin.
Funding pathways
Divisions rarely fund this from a new line. Five existing ones fit:
| Pathway | How it fits |
|---|---|
| AIS Innovation in Education Pilot Program | Virginia's 2026 AI law created a pilot program funded at $2 million in the FY 2027-2028 budget, with priority to under-resourced divisions. This is the newest and most specific pathway on the list. The administering office and application window had not been published when we last checked. |
| Perkins V | Career and technical education funds — the natural home for work-based learning placements, credential attainment, and CTE-hosted capstones. |
| Title IV-A | Well-rounded education and effective use of technology. The standard route for the Common Spine layer. |
| College Partnership Laboratory School planning grant | Up to $200,000 for one-time design costs, applied for by a partnering college or university rather than the division. Relevant if a center wants to formalize a higher-education partnership. |
| Local education foundations | Showcase programs photograph well and fund easily. The May exhibition is usually what closes the second year of funding. |
We will help match the program to a pathway and draft the budget-justification language. Not legal or financial advice.
Why this year
Three things landed at once
- The 2024 Computer Science Standards of Learning require full implementation this school year, and the Impacts of Computing strand is where AI content belongs.
- Virginia’s 2026 AI law took effect July 1, directing the Department of Education to issue guidance on AI in instructional settings and requiring every school board to adopt aligned policies — with a $2 million pilot program attached in the FY 2027-2028 budget. Some divisions in this region are further along than others; the ones that have not adopted a policy yet are writing one this year.
- A new cybersecurity center opens in Henrico this year, and a nine-credit dual enrollment AI sequence already exists on the Brightpoint schedule. The pieces are on the table; nobody has assembled them.
A center that starts the conversation this fall can run a cohort on a free published brief bank in spring 2027 and have the Capstone Pack funded for FY28. A center that waits a year applies to a Governor’s STEM Academy cycle it has already missed, because that filing has to reach the Board at least eight months before opening.
How this page was checked
Credit mechanics were verified against the Virginia Standards of Accreditation, the Board-approved substitute test list, VDOE work-based learning guidance, and the Virginia Community College System course catalog. Center names and capstone requirements were verified against division publications and school websites. Where sources disagree — the current work-based learning internship hour minimum is the live example — we say so on this page rather than pick the number that sells better.
Found something out of date about your center? Tell us and we will fix it. Contact form
After you try a bank
Does your center already have a place for this work?
One question, not a purchase. Thirty minutes of reading a free bank is enough to start; the survey tells us whether Capstone Pack instruments are worth a later conversation.