The Lawrence school district has delayed responding for months to an open record request related to its silent switch from one AI monitoring software to another. It’s also asking for thousands of dollars to produce the records. 

The school district this summer stopped using Gaggle, an AI tool that sifts through anything connected to the district’s Google Workspace and flags content it deems a safety risk. They instead began using a new tool called Managed Methods, which has nearly identical capabilities. The switch was not announced publicly and did not require school board approval.

Days after the silent switch was made public by news reports in late October, this publication filed its initial request for relevant documents and internal communications. 

The district replied to the initial request by saying it was under review. For the next three months, that was the only information provided. 

The Kansas Open Records Act requires a public agency to respond to open records requests in three business days with either the records, an explanation of why the records were denied, or a detailed explanation for delay. The school district did not provide any of these.

The district did eventually respond in late January, providing an invoice with Managed Methods, but said the rest of the records would require two additional months and payment of nearly $13,000.

In response, this publication filed an amended request with a much narrower scope. The district again did not respond to the request within three business days. 

A few weeks later, after a Lawrence Times reporter contacted school board members to seek comment on the failure to provide records, the district responded to the amended request, saying it would need two weeks and nearly $1,500 to provide the records. 

The goal of this publication’s request is to find more information about how and why the transition to Managed Methods occurred. 

Over the summer, Superintendent Jeanice Swift said the district would continue using Gaggle this year, but that ended up not being true. The cessation of Gaggle was only made public when the district’s lawyers filed court documents related to an ongoing lawsuit saying the district had ceased use of Gaggle. But those documents made no mention of the new AI tool, Managed Methods. 

“When government agencies in Kansas ignore their duty under KORA to provide timely and transparent access to public records, they undermine public trust and the law itself,” said Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association. “If records are being withheld or delayed, that is not in the public’s or the school district’s best interest.”

This publication sent requests for comment to each school board member. Board President GR Gordon-Ross responded, saying the board would not comment due to pending litigation. District spokesperson Jake Potter said the same.  

Alan Rupe, a lawyer representing the school district in the Gaggle lawsuit, said in an email the requests were “quite extensive.” 

“The school district needed significant amounts of time to evaluate the requests and create estimates for how much time and how many costs would be required to comply with your requests,” Rupe said. “The school district has now provided two different cost estimates to ensure that you are willing to pay the requisite costs before we complete the required collections, review and productions.”

KORA’s requirements for the timeline and nature of responses to requests are the same regardless of their complexity. 

Student journalists also haven’t received open records 

A group of current and former students who are suing the school district over its use of Gaggle have engaged in a similar debate over the district’s failure to provide records as part of that lawsuit.

In late January, the plaintiffs filed a motion asking a judge to immediately rule on a set of claims arguing the district violated KORA, because they said the district did not dispute any of the relevant facts. 

The plaintiffs argue KORA places the burden on the public agency to comply with the outlined process, but the district’s only response for months was a statement that the records were under review. 

The district’s lawyers responded in legal filings by arguing the KORA request was improper because plaintiffs sought information related to the case. 

The parties are currently debating a motion filed by the district claiming two defendants, Lawrence High School Principal Quentin Rials and Assistant Principal Greg Farley, are protected by qualified immunity.

A judge decided there would be a delay in holding a scheduling conference for the case until that qualified immunity debate was resolved. Discovery cannot begin until after a scheduling conference. 

The district said the plaintiff’s KORA request goes against the spirit of this order by attempting to skirt the delay. They say people protected under qualified immunity are not just protected from trial, but also from discovery. 

“There is significant authority suggesting that KORA requests are improper when they seek records related to the subject matter of a pending lawsuit with a discovery stay (a pause in discovery pending a court decision) in place,” Rupe said. “We will know more about the scope of such a stay when the court rules on the pending motions that address that issue.”

However, the plaintiffs say KORA and discovery are independent of each other, and any delay in discovery does not mean KORA requests can be ignored. 

“KORA isn’t discovery; it’s Kansas’ sunshine law,” said Harrison Rosenthal, the students’ lawyer. “The district doesn’t get to switch it off because this litigation, or the underlying records, is inconvenient.”

Rosenthal said the district’s own actions prove it could comply with the KORA request. In January, the district partially fulfilled the students open records request by producing Managed Methods invoices and asked for $13,000 in fees to produce other records. This occurred while the scheduling delay was in place, which the district was arguing allowed it to avoid fulfilling the KORA request.  

“The surveillance didn’t stop; it changed names,” Rosenthal said. “Families deserve to know how, and by whom, students are being surveilled. … Student journalists have a right to report on their own school district. Withholding records because the requesters are plaintiffs chills newsgathering. That’s not how KORA — or the First Amendment — works.”

Cuyler Dunn (he/him), a contributor to The Lawrence Times since April 2022, is a student at the University of Kansas School of Journalism. He is a graduate of Lawrence High School where he was the editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper, The Budget, and was named the 2022 Kansas High School Journalist of the Year. Read his complete bio here. Read more of his work for the Times here.

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