Issue 0: Charting a New Course 🧭

Welcome to Compass EDU!! Peck Education’s monthly dispatch that syncs big-picture theory with boots-on-the-ground tactics, written by practitioners, for practitioners. While LinkedIn has many voices discussing how to navigate AI in education, few can claim to be in a K-12 school each day, managing IT budgets before the first bell and navigating AI policy after the last bell. This isn't a zero-sum game. It will take diverse perspectives to disrupt and transform the traditional paradigm. Compass EDU is one of those voices.

What is Compass EDU?

Compass EDU is the first waypoint in a growing ecosystem—consulting, cohort courses, and tools like TechAdvisor AI (more on this later), all designed by a school leader, for school leaders. This newsletter won’t be a monthly sales pitch. Instead, expect:

• Signals from the edge of ed-tech

• Thought-provoking insights on where learning is headed

• Ready-to-use assets that empower your leadership

• Updates from Peck Education

  
  

To learn more about my writing, feel free to visit my blog! Before we dive into the regularly scheduled program...

Issue 0 is different. Though Peck Education LLC was quietly incorporated in January, this letter marks the public launch of what feels like a lifetime's worth of late-night hours. By day, I’m the Director of Technology & Innovative Learning for a K-12 district; after hours, I build Peck Education to help fellow leaders navigate digital transformation without the hype. Today’s Issue 0—our Founder’s Letter—dives into who we are and what’s ahead. In two weeks, Issue 1 will land with actionable signals, tools, and prompts you can deploy right away.

Founder’s Letter – June 9, 2025

“Technology is racing ahead—and for too long K-12 has been jogging in place.”

Why I’m Writing

Seventeen years ago, I stepped into a seventh-grade classroom armed with a textbook, worksheets, a stack of transparencies, and a single laptop. Today, every student in that same building carries a personal Chromebook. Yet, the core experience, the bell schedule, the worksheets, and the siloed subjects look eerily familiar.

Meanwhile, outside the school walls, I’ve watched AI agents building businesses on Facebook, synthetic tutors providing calculus hints in real time, and Web3 projects rebuilding credentialing from the ground up. The gap between the leading edge of technology in industry and how schools operate is now widening.

That gap and the urgency it creates for the people who lead our systems drive the work at Peck Education LLC.

Peck Education exists because leaders need more than inspirational quotes, 50-page frameworks, prompting guides, and soundbites on the latest AI models. They need practical, values-driven tools and strategies for action from practitioners doing the work of transforming schools. The three pillars below will serve as the blueprint for our work. They define who we are, how we operate, and why every decision we make must shorten the gap between today’s incremental fixes and tomorrow’s transformative possibilities.

Peck Education's Three Pillars

1. Practitioner First: I still lead a public-school technology department every day. I troubleshoot Wi-Fi at 7 a.m. and lead technology professional development at 3 p.m. I don’t pontificate from the sidelines. You get context-rich insights straight from on-the-ground experience.

   
   

2. Provision, Not Dependence: Great consulting should make you less reliant on the consultant. My products and services are designed to equip leaders with the frameworks, tools, and foresight skills they need to keep innovating long after I’ve stepped away.

   
   

3. The Three-Bucket Lens: A good friend and mentor of mine shared this approach to school transformation. It’s a simple yet effective way to frame the work that lies ahead. Every service, template, and coaching session maps to one of those buckets.

   
   

What We’re Building in 2025

TechAdvisor AI – Your Pocket CTO

What better way to learn about AI than to build with it? TechAdvisor AI is an AI-powered co-pilot trained on public resources from ISTE, CISA, the U.S. Office of EdTech, and other leading education and IT organizations. Ask it anything from “Which LMS best meets our privacy regulations?” to “Draft an AI acceptable-use policy for grades 6-12.” Why build TechAdvisor? Because technology leaders are often the jack of all trades! I joke that anything that plugs into a wall eventually becomes our purview. In our interconnected world, your IT leaders can be drivers of innovation, and TechAdvisor helps fill in the gaps.

My stretch goal: 100 paying subscribers by December, because every Technology Director, Instructional Coach, Curriculum Director, and Superintendent deserves on-demand strategic advice.

AI Leadership Accelerator – Cohort-Based Mastery

This six-week program blends asynchronous micro-lessons with live group coaching. It arms leaders with strategic foresight, scenario planning, and concrete AI pilot blueprints. We’re targeting the launch of a beta cohort in Q3 to audit the asynchronous learning modules, and by Q4, we will host our first blended cohort. Those graduates will form the nucleus of a private community where district teams share playbooks and hold each other accountable.

Our goal is to offer a program designed by school leaders for school leaders, which includes toolkits and connections that leaders need to take immediate action in their contexts.

Targeted Consulting & Workshops

For districts that want more personalized support, I’m excited to guide organizations in auditing infrastructure, crafting AI governance, and prototyping new learning models. These engagements feed real-world lessons back into the Advisor and Accelerator, keeping both tools grounded in practice.

What We’ve Done So Far

• Practitioner-focused insights and updates from the leading edge of the intersection of technology and education. You can check out my blog and my YouTube Channel for some of my most recent work.

• Led over 100 leaders through AI boot camps and conference sessions in the past 12 months. From conference sessions to AI boot camps, leaders have shared that the need for grounded, context-rich support for school leaders is more necessary than ever. Peck Education has and will continue to serve those in need.

  
  

• Early TechAdvisor beta users have logged over 300 queries, saving an estimated 50 director-hours on strategy, policy development, and professional development drafting.

  
  

Where We’re Heading

By 2026, we want 500 District CTOs, Tech Coaches, and forward-thinking Superintendents to carry their pocket CTO, which grows smarter each time the community hits Enter. We envision a network of AI-literate leaders who exchange real-time insights and strategies, issue micro-credentials in emerging-tech leadership, and co-design the future of education.

How Can You Join the Work?

1. Subscribe to the Compass EDU newsletter. Set your course for the future by staying up to date on the latest from Peck Education.

   
   

2. Head to Peck Education to check out my latest work and be the first to catch the latest updates by subscribing.

   
   

3. Hit reply. Tell me the single biggest AI or tech challenge on your plate this summer. Your frontline questions shape the roadmap.

   
   

Sync up soon,

Mike

Dr. Mike Peck

Founder, Peck Education LLC

Director of Technology and Innovative Learning, K-12 Public School

Relentless tinkerer