In 2026, it’s hard to imagine how anyone ever lived without electricity. But in the mid-1930s, 90% of rural households in the U.S. were, electrically speaking, powerless. While most cities got electricity more than a decade earlier, many farms and rural towns didn’t gain access to the technology until 1936, when programs associated with the New Deal began offering government-backed loans to support infrastructure.
But as the government would soon discover, access wasn’t the only thing keeping rural America from electrifying. In fact, lots of folks weren’t sure they even wanted electricity. After all, they’d gotten along just fine without it for decades, so why bother? In reality, though, rural Americans—especially women—weren’t getting along just fine. At the time, women on farms worked between 64 and 74 hours a week, and the hard physical labor was literally taking years off their lives. Electrical appliances had the potential to simplify much of their work and save them an enormous amount of time—but only if people saw the value for themselves.
While rural Americans had plenty of logical hesitations about electricity—safety concerns, distrust of the government and private power companies, financial problems from the ongoing Great Depression—their primary roadblock was that they had no frame of reference for what it could actually do for them. So the newly established Rural Electrification Administration (REA) set about proving the benefits of electricity. The REA hired advisors to visit 28 states, where they hosted what came to be called “electric circuses”: roadshows demonstrating tools like electric stoves, refrigerators and vacuum cleaners. And it worked. By 1950, 90% of American farms had connected to electricity. And as a result, women on farms had more time to pursue interests outside of household labor.
Electric circuses worked because the REA didn’t force people to adopt electricity, or pressure them with the idea that they were “falling behind” their city-dwelling peers. They simply made the tangible benefits clear. That’s why we intend this issue of SchoolCEO to be an “artificial intelligence circus”: an exploration of the practical ways AI could revolutionize your central office work.
In this edition, we’ll share thoughts from school leaders, communicators and technology officers—as well as ethicists, researchers, and private sector experts—to give you a better frame of reference for what AI could actually do for your schools. We won’t just talk about it, either. We’ll demonstrate actual use cases. We’re not here to apply pressure or to dismiss your concerns about AI; in fact, we share many of them. But we are here to explore how this evolving technology could give you time back—time to pursue the things that are most important to you at work and in life.
In 2026, it’s hard to imagine how anyone ever lived without electricity. But in the mid-1930s, 90% of rural households in the U.S. were, electrically speaking, powerless. While most cities got electricity more than a decade earlier, many farms and rural towns didn’t gain access to the technology until 1936, when programs associated with the New Deal began offering government-backed loans to support infrastructure.
But as the government would soon discover, access wasn’t the only thing keeping rural America from electrifying. In fact, lots of folks weren’t sure they even wanted electricity. After all, they’d gotten along just fine without it for decades, so why bother? In reality, though, rural Americans—especially women—weren’t getting along just fine. At the time, women on farms worked between 64 and 74 hours a week, and the hard physical labor was literally taking years off their lives. Electrical appliances had the potential to simplify much of their work and save them an enormous amount of time—but only if people saw the value for themselves.
While rural Americans had plenty of logical hesitations about electricity—safety concerns, distrust of the government and private power companies, financial problems from the ongoing Great Depression—their primary roadblock was that they had no frame of reference for what it could actually do for them. So the newly established Rural Electrification Administration (REA) set about proving the benefits of electricity. The REA hired advisors to visit 28 states, where they hosted what came to be called “electric circuses”: roadshows demonstrating tools like electric stoves, refrigerators and vacuum cleaners. And it worked. By 1950, 90% of American farms had connected to electricity. And as a result, women on farms had more time to pursue interests outside of household labor.
Electric circuses worked because the REA didn’t force people to adopt electricity, or pressure them with the idea that they were “falling behind” their city-dwelling peers. They simply made the tangible benefits clear. That’s why we intend this issue of SchoolCEO to be an “artificial intelligence circus”: an exploration of the practical ways AI could revolutionize your central office work.
In this edition, we’ll share thoughts from school leaders, communicators and technology officers—as well as ethicists, researchers, and private sector experts—to give you a better frame of reference for what AI could actually do for your schools. We won’t just talk about it, either. We’ll demonstrate actual use cases. We’re not here to apply pressure or to dismiss your concerns about AI; in fact, we share many of them. But we are here to explore how this evolving technology could give you time back—time to pursue the things that are most important to you at work and in life.