Manhattan School District Adopts BoardBook Premier to Digitize Meetings and Enhance Public Transparency

Manhattan School District 114 Meeting | March 25, 2026

Article Summary: To modernize operations and improve public access to information, the Manhattan School District 114 Board of Education completed a live test of its new digital agenda and meeting management software, BoardBook Premier.

Digital Board Transition Key Points:

• The district is transitioning away from paper packets to a fully digital platform for organizing agendas, documents, and meeting minutes.

• Board members will begin using district-provided iPads to follow the digital meetings in real-time starting April 8.

• A public-facing portal will eventually be linked to the district’s website, allowing residents to view the exact non-confidential documents and memos provided to the board.

• Officials hope the added transparency will help provide critical context to the community and mitigate misinformation spread on social media.

The Manhattan School District 114 Board of Education on Wednesday, March 25, 2026, officially previewed its transition to a fully digital meeting environment, testing the newly purchased BoardBook Premier software designed to streamline governance and open a new window of transparency for the public.

During the special meeting, district administrators and Recording Secretary Sarah guided the board through a live, interactive demonstration of the platform. The system allows board members to log in from their devices, follow the agenda in real-time as the secretary advances the meeting, take private digital notes, and review attached PDF documents without shuffling through massive paper packets.

“We’ve adopted and purchased the BoardBook Premier a few months back now,” district officials explained during the presentation. “These past few months, Sarah has been actually putting in the regular board meetings in here… she’s grown quite adept to how to operate the actual platform itself.”

The board plans to officially roll out the technology at its upcoming April 8 meeting, where members will be provided with iPads to navigate the agenda. To ensure a smooth transition, the district will continue providing printed materials concurrently for the next few months until the board is entirely comfortable running paperless meetings.

Beyond internal efficiency, the platform’s most significant impact will be on public transparency. Once fully launched, the district will place a link on its website directing residents to a public homepage. There, community members will be able to click on upcoming agendas, read approved minutes, and view the exact public documents, exhibits, and memos that board members are reviewing.

Board members acknowledged that placing highly detailed financial and operational documents online could spark increased community discussion. However, they agreed that the proactive release of information is necessary to build trust and provide accurate context to residents who might otherwise rely on incomplete narratives on platforms like Facebook.

“I want people to be more educated and more aware of what’s going on,” one board member noted during the discussion. “Obviously there is with the Facebook world… the more things they have in their hands and they don’t understand what they’re looking at, there may be more chatter that comes from this being more prevalent. But it’s a good thing that we are providing it to the community.”

Officials noted that the public launch of the portal will not happen immediately. The district plans to utilize the April and May meetings to test the system internally, confirm historical agendas are accurately imported, and ensure all features work seamlessly before making the link accessible to the public.