Education · Ordinary People
The school district CIO who stopped buying software and taught his team to build it
Kris Hagel, James Cantonwine · Gig Harbor, Washington
When Peninsula School District's tech chief got tired of paying vendors for simple software, he picked up Claude Code, taught his colleagues to do the same, and the district started canceling contracts instead of renewing them.
The person and the place
Kris Hagel runs technology for Peninsula School District, a public school system in Gig Harbor, Washington. He has spent more than two decades in K-12 tech, most of it approving other people's software.
The problem they cared about
Every year brought another vendor quote for a tool the district needed: workflow forms, lesson-planning dashboards, and a digital signature system. The prices kept climbing, and building software in-house never looked like a real option for a school IT department.
The agency moment
Hagel and Peninsula's research director, James Cantonwine, started prompting Claude Code to write the tools themselves instead. Cantonwine, a former middle school science teacher with no formal coding background, built a lesson-feedback app called LessonLens without learning to code the traditional way. Hagel adapted an open-source e-signature tool the same way. Soon, several other administrators had picked up their own Claude Code subscriptions and started building.
What changed, with evidence
By spring 2026, Peninsula had working, homegrown replacements for several paid tools, running on the district's own AI Studio system. One strategic-planning app that would have cost $30,000 to $40,000 from a vendor was built in a few hours instead. The district projects it will save $220,000 to $250,000 by the 2026-27 school year in canceled contracts. Beyond LessonLens, the team has built tools for accounting, human resources, and other back-office work that used to mean writing another check to a vendor.
The move worth copying
The habit spreading through Peninsula's office isn't one specific app, it's opening Claude Code before opening a vendor's pricing page. "Just try and see what you can build," Hagel said. If your team has been paying for something a clear enough prompt could handle, try building the small version yourself first.
"Just try and see what you can build." — Kris Hagel, K-12 Dive
Sources
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