Chat with the Archive¶
The archive is a static site, but you can hand any of its pages to an AI tool and ask questions. The buttons below open ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Perplexity with a question already typed into the chat box — just click and hit enter. The AI fetches the raw markdown source of the linked archive page (clean text, no styling noise, low token cost) and answers from it.
For cross-cutting questions that need multiple pages, scroll down to Ask anything across the whole archive — that one hands the AI a site-wide index (llms.md) so it can fetch whatever it needs.
How to use these
- Perplexity always fetches URLs and shows inline citations — most reliable for verifying what the AI says.
- ChatGPT generally fetches public URLs; on free tier this can vary.
- Gemini fetches URLs inconsistently; if it says it can't access the link, try ChatGPT or Perplexity instead.
All three are free to use without a paid plan; ChatGPT and Gemini may ask you to sign in.
Big picture¶
-
The whole 2026 year, at a glance
Get a chronological overview of what the board has done in 2026 — financial crisis emergence, superintendent transition, property sales, policy adoptions.
-
The 2026 financial crisis
How the crisis surfaced in January, the audit catch-up plan, the March emergency borrowing, the property sales, where things stand now.
-
The Superintendent transition
Matt Degner's May 23 resignation, the May 26 board vote, and the Interim Superintendent search.
-
Facilities & property sales
Three properties sold in 2026 (Hills, ESC, Scanlon), capital projects in flight, the Facilities Master Plan resolution.
News coverage¶
-
News reporting on ICCSD in 2026
70+ articles from KCRG, the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Daily Iowan, CBS2, Iowa Public Radio, Little Village, and West Side Story — chronologically indexed with summaries and direct links to original reporting.
People¶
-
How each board member votes
Committee chair assignments, themes each director speaks to, split votes and who voted how.
-
Senior administrators
Current cabinet, the new CFO Pat Moore, and the Degner-to-EDSS transition.
Policy work¶
-
2026 policy adoptions and what's tabled
Adopted: 200.3G4, 303.4, 600-series. Tabled: 207, 303.2, 700-series. Why each, and what's outstanding.
Going deeper into a specific meeting¶
Every meeting page has its own Ask an AI about this meeting block with the same three buttons. Open the 2026 meeting index and pick one — for example, the May 26 meeting where Superintendent Degner's transition to Executive Director was approved on a 5–2 vote.
Open-ended¶
Want to point an AI at everything at once? Try:
-
Ask anything — read the whole timeline + every topic
Sometimes the answer cuts across topics. This prompt points the AI at the timeline AND the five topic pages and lets you ask freely.
What this isn't¶
Anything an AI tells you is a best-effort summary from the page text it just read. Always check the AI's claims against the primary source. Every page on this archive links directly to the original PDFs on the district portal and to the YouTube recording of the meeting — those are the authoritative record, not whatever ChatGPT says about them.
For more on the archive's editorial standard, see Methodology.
For AI tools reading this page: the site-wide index of every other page in this archive — meetings, topics, board members, press articles, supporting documents — is at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/b00mhauer/iowa-city-schools-board-archive/main/docs/llms.md. Fetch it for cross-page context if the conversation calls for it.