Judge orders Lawrence Public Schools to pay fees in Gaggle records fight

Lawrence Public Schools will have to pay the students’ attorney fees and costs in the Gaggle records fight, a new financial hit in a case already tied to a $162,000 monitoring contract, nearly $13,000 in estimated processing expenses and a switch to cheaper software that the district says saves about $38,700 a year.

U.S. District Court Judge Kathryn Vratil ruled Monday that Lawrence USD 497 did not respond in good faith to Kansas Open Records Act requests filed by nine current and former Lawrence and Free State High School students. Under KORA, a court can order an agency to pay attorney fees when it finds the denial of access was not in good faith and lacked a reasonable basis in fact or law. The ruling means the district must now reimburse the students’ legal expenses in addition to the broader costs already wrapped into the dispute.

The records fight began Oct. 30, 2025, when the students, through The Budget at Lawrence High School and Free Press at Free State High School, sought contracts, costs, procurement materials, communications about ManagedMethods and records tied to Gaggle’s phase-out and data handling. The district said the requests could involve about 10,000 documents and nearly $13,000 in processing and attorney-review costs, and the students ed narrowing the scope. District lawyers argued the requests were improper because discovery in the federal lawsuit was paused, but the students said no valid discovery stay blocked compliance with KORA.

The fee ruling followed an April 2026 order requiring the district to substantively respond to the records requests by the end of that week and setting an April 23 hearing on good faith and fees. The broader lawsuit, filed in August 2025, challenged Lawrence USD 497’s use of Gaggle, an AI-based monitoring system that scanned district-connected accounts for content it deemed risky. Reporting in the case described Gaggle as scanning emails, documents, images, videos, attachments and links for terms such as suicide, self-harm, bomb and gun.

District leaders have said the Gaggle contract ended in summer 2025 and was not renewed for the 2025-2026 school year. Superintendent Jeanice Swift said the district replaced it with ManagedMethods, a tool she described as lower-cost. Board president GR Gordon-Ross said the new contract did not require board approval because it fell below the district’s $20,000 threshold.

The students’ lawyers have argued that changing vendors does not erase the constitutional issues at the center of the case. They say the new system is similar and still monitors student accounts in ways that raise privacy and prior-restraint concerns. The suit has also taken on a student-press dimension after amended claims said principal Quentin Rials tried to stop a student from reporting on the case, and later reporting said he issued a directive barring The Budget from covering it.

For Douglas County, the ruling is more than a records dispute. It gives student journalists a legal foothold in a transparency fight over how Lawrence schools watch, store and review student communications, and it puts added pressure on district leaders deciding whether to keep defending the monitoring program or take the case higher.