AP School Board Search launches to transform local coverage of thousands of school boards 

Local schools play an integral role in communities, but as newsrooms have shrunk, coverage of school boards and local education issues has declined. Many school systems go largely uncovered, to the detriment of accountability. 

AP education data reporter Sharon Lurye came up with an innovative solution to help newsrooms with scarce resources sift through publicly available information and focus on crucial stories. 

Partnering with researchers who study school board governance, Lurye built a tool that searches YouTube transcripts of school board meetings for more than 3,000 districts in 49 states. With the tool, reporters can quickly monitor school board meetings in multiple districts to identify trends and find people who might be willing to speak on the record for stories. 

The search includes AI summaries of each meeting discussion, along with a transcript with a link that takes users to the exact timestamp in the YouTube video, where they can verify the transcription and gather additional context. 

School Board Search launched with an initial group of more than 30 newsrooms selected from AP membership, the APFJ state and local program and the Education Reporting Network. Two dozen journalists joined the launch demo, and 90 already have signed up for accounts, with plans to expand the tool to the whole APFJ program and all ERN superusers. 

Judges were impressed by the tool’s ingenuity, distinctiveness and success as an accountability tool that also delivers value for local partners.  

For innovation and advancing AP’s work supporting local journalism, Lurye wins this week’s Best of the AP – Second Winner.