photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

The Lawrence school district offices building, located at 110 McDonald Dr., is pictured in May 2025.

Although the Lawrence school district has stopped using Gaggle, it is now using a different student monitoring software — and its use was not voted on by board members or mentioned in court documents filed Monday.

The school district implemented Gaggle in 2023 on its devices to hone in on on keywords within students’ emails and online accounts that could indicate “concerning behavior” when a student uses them, such as “suicide,” “self-harm,” “bomb” or “gun.” It also scans pictures, videos, attachments and links via a process that combines artificial intelligence and human moderators.

A lawsuit was filed against the school district for its use of the software, and in recent court documents filed on Monday, the district told the court it has stopped using Gaggle software on its devices to monitor students, as the Journal-World reported. However, the district is utilizing a similar software called ManagedMethods.

The district did not mention in the court documents about now using ManagedMethods, and it did not get added to the school board’s agenda for a vote during one of their public meetings. The Journal-World asked Superintendent Jeanice Swift why ManagedMethods wasn’t mentioned in court documents, and she did not immediately respond on Thursday.

Gaggle’s contract ended in summer 2025, and it has not been renewed for the 2025-2026 school year. School board president GR Gordon-Ross told the Journal-World in an email that district administration selected ManagedMethods as a “lower-cost tool” that continues to monitor for student safety and it has resulted in roughly $35,000 in annual savings.

Gordon-Ross said because the new contract with ManagedMethods did not exceed the district’s threshold requiring board approval, which are purchases more than $20,000, it did not need to be placed on the board’s agenda for a vote. The Journal-World reached out Swift for the cost of the contract, but she did not respond.

Gordon-Ross added that, “Board members were kept apprised during the process,” but he did elaborate further.

Even though ManagedMethods and Gaggle both aim to keep K-12 students safe online, they focus on different aspects of digital safety.

ManagedMethods is primarily a cloud application security and data‐loss prevention platform for school districts, especially for cloud suites like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. It can also detect concerning behavior. Meanwhile, Gaggle focuses on monitoring student safety and well‐being – such as cyberbullying, self‐harm and violence threats – by scanning school-issued accounts with AI and human review.

Gaggle has received criticism in the district since its implementation a few years ago. The lawsuit by nine current and former students from Lawrence and Free State High Schools claims that the Lawrence school district violated their First and Fourth Amendment rights by conducting unlawful searches of digital files created by student journalists.

According to the lawsuit, the software has allegedly identified and removed journalistic materials such as publication drafts, emails, and collaborative documents. It also claims the software has deleted student assignments and mistakenly flagged an art student’s photography project as “child pornography.”

The Journal-World asked Gordon-Ross and Swift if they believe the decision on signing a contract with ManagedMethods should have been brought before the board for a vote due to the public’s interest in the software. Gordon-Ross did not address the question in his statement to the Journal-World, and Swift did not immediately respond.