# How to Use This Archive

This site is built to be three things at once: a fast index of every public
ICCSD board meeting, a topical reference that stitches related decisions
across meetings, and a transparent record of how that reference was put
together.

Here's how to get the most out of it.

## The four ways to browse

### 1. By meeting

[Meetings → 2026](meetings/2026/index.md) is the chronological index of
every public board meeting in the calendar year. Each entry links to a
per-meeting page with:

- The official date, time, and location
- A direct link to the meeting on the district's portal
- The full agenda, item by item
- Direct deep-links to every supporting document
- Notable motions, recommendations, and contact persons

### 2. By topic

[Topics](topics/index.md) groups decisions and discussions by subject —
budget, superintendent search, facilities, policy changes, boundary lines.
Topic pages cite the specific meetings and documents involved so you can
verify every claim.

Topic pages are written by the archive maintainer (not the district) and are
marked accordingly. They are the most editorial part of the site.

### 3. By timeline

[Timeline](timeline.md) is a chronological roll-up of major events across
meetings: contract approvals, large facilities decisions, policy adoptions,
board composition changes.

### 4. By search

The search box (top bar) covers every page on the site — meetings, topics,
people, framework pages. It does **not** cover the contents of attached PDFs;
those live on the district site.

## When to trust the markdown vs. the source

A simple rule: **the markdown is a finding aid, not the record.**

| If you want to... | Use... |
|---|---|
| Find out what happened, get the gist | the meeting page on this site |
| Quote a board member, cite a vote, file public records request | the original PDF on the district site (linked from every meeting page) |
| Understand context across multiple meetings | a topic page on this site |
| Verify a topic-page claim | follow the meeting + document links it cites |

Editorial content (summaries, topic narratives, analysis) is clearly
separated from primary-source text on every page. We carry through the
district's agenda summaries verbatim where they exist, and clearly mark
anything added by the archive.

## Reporting problems

If you find an error — a wrong date, a misquoted decision, a stale link, a
summary that misrepresents the source — open an
[issue](https://github.com/b00mhauer/iowa-city-schools-board-archive/issues) or a pull
request. Corrections are welcome; this site is meant to be edited.

For more on how the archive was built, what its limits are, and how it
treats primary sources, see [Methodology](methodology.md).

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<!-- LLM_FOOTER_v1 -->
*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.*