For California school districts

It's 7pm Tuesday. Your principal is about to answer from memory.

The answer is somewhere in five stacked layers of governance: federal law, the California Education Code, your board policies, the administrative regulations under them, and the collective bargaining agreement that quietly overrides part of all of it. DistrictWise reads all five at once and returns one cited card in under two minutes. When the layers conflict or go silent, it says so and stops.

Run it on your policies See a real answer card

Live beta at Western Placer Unified · 4.75 / 5 in blind administrator review

HIGH RISK

as of 2026-07-24

"A student was bullied by classmates. What do I do?"

Answer

Do not respond from this card. The conduct described may meet the definition of sex based harassment, which moves the matter out of your bullying regulation and into Title IX. Your governing regulation is AR 5131.2, revised March 2016, which predates the current federal rule. The layer that governs and the layer you have adopted do not agree.

Governing policy

AR 5131.2 Bullying

revised 2016-03 · flagged stale

Legal floor

Title IX · 20 U.S.C. § 1681
34 C.F.R. § 106.44 · EC 234.1

Bring this question to the district office

"Does this report trigger our Title IX grievance procedure rather than the AR 5131.2 bullying process, and who is the Title IX Coordinator of record this year?"

Save card Attach to incident Print / PDF 5 layers read

01 · The stack

Nobody governs from one document.

Every decision a district leader makes sits under five layers of authority, written by different bodies, at different times, for different reasons. They overlap. They contradict. Only one of them is searchable, and it is the wrong one.

Layer

What it governs

Where it lives today

Federal law

Title IX, IDEA, FERPA, Section 504. The floor you cannot negotiate below.

Federal registers and OCR guidance letters

State law

California Education Code, Title 5, Government Code. 2,200+ statutes, amended every session.

Leginfo, keyword search only

Board policy

What your trustees adopted, in your district, on a date. Sometimes years behind the statute above it.

A portal, one PDF at a time

Administrative regulation

The procedure staff are actually held to. Where the timelines, forms and notice requirements hide.

Same portal, rarely read

CBA

The bargained agreement that can override the regulation above it for represented staff. The layer most often missed.

A 90 page PDF in someone's email

What the search looks like today

Open the policy portal. Guess the number. Read the BP, realize the answer is in the AR, open that. Notice it cites a statute, look up the statute, find it was amended. Remember the CBA might apply. Call someone who might know. Forty minutes gone, still not certain.

What it looks like with DistrictWise

Ask in plain language. All five layers are read together, the conflicts between them are surfaced rather than smoothed over, and you get one card that says which layer governs, what it requires, and how current it is.

02 · The moment, in three beats

Recognize the exposure

Before a word is said to the parent, the situation is named for what it legally is: a Title IX matter, not "a bullying thing." That single reframe changes which layer of the stack governs.

Ground it in your governance

Federal floor, state statute, your board policy, the regulation staff are held to, and the CBA if represented staff are involved. All five, with adoption and revision dates, so nobody acts on a 2016 regulation without knowing it.

Respond, and have it on record

The card saves and attaches. The research step is documented, for the principal and for the district.

03 · Try it without signing up

Pick a situation. See what your principal would see.

Three real questions, one per risk band. Run against Western Placer Unified's adopted corpus.

Scenario

Or bring your own. We will run it against your district's corpus and send you the card.

Ask your own question

CLEAR

as of 2026-07-24

Answer

Yes. A parent may audio record an IEP meeting. Education Code 56341.1(g)(1) requires the parent to notify the district at least 24 hours in advance, and the district may record as well. Your AR 6159 tracks the statute and adds no further condition.

Next step

Confirm the notice arrived at least 24 hours ahead, log it in the meeting record, and state at the top of the meeting that it is being recorded.

Governing policy

AR 6159 Individualized Education Program

revised 2023-11 · current

Legal floor

EC 56341.1(g)(1)
IDEA · 34 C.F.R. § 300.322

Save card Attach to incident Print / PDF Not legal advice. It hands you the research and the record.

04 · The band system

It stops. It doesn't decide.

Most tools are built to always have an answer. DistrictWise is built to know when a layer is silent, when two layers disagree, and when your local policy has fallen behind the statute above it.

CLEAR

A governing policy exists and it fits. You get the policy and the routine step. You still make the call.

VERIFY

Answerable, after you check one thing. The card names the one thing.

HIGH RISK

Don't act yet. Instead of an answer you get the question to put in front of the district office or counsel, already framed.

That is why "not legal advice" is true here and not just printed. The card never green-lights an action. It hands your team the research, and the record that the research happened.

05 · What's under it

Your policies. Only yours. Never stale.

Board policies, administrative regulations, bylaws and bargaining agreements pulled from your own adopted corpus, not a generic model's memory of what districts usually do. Re-synced automatically every two weeks, so the card reflects what your board has actually adopted.

2,200+ Ed Code statutes

The California legal floor threaded in automatically, alongside the federal statutes above it, and held distinct from local policy when the layers diverge.

Citations you can open

Layer, policy or statute number, title, section, revision date, source link. Every claim tied to the citation that backs it, locatable in under two minutes.

Student data stays with you

Student and staff names are replaced with placeholders before the question leaves your district. The model reasons about the situation, never about the student.

How masking works

The model never learns a student's name.

Names are replaced with placeholders before the question leaves your district, and put back after the answer returns. The reasoning happens on the situation. Identifiable student information never reaches the model.

In your district

Principal types

"Can I suspend Marcus Delgado for what he posted about Ms. Whitfield?"

Masking layer

Placeholders swapped in

"Can I suspend [STUDENT_1] for what he posted about [STAFF_1]?"

The key stays in your district. Never transmitted.

The model

Reasons across the stack

Sees a suspension question involving a student and a staff member. Reads EC 48900(r), BP 5131.2, AR 5144.1, and the CBA article on staff conduct.

No name, no student ID, no school site.

Names restored, your side

Card renders with real names

"Off campus speech about Ms. Whitfield reaches suspension only if…"

Readable, attachable, defensible.

Highlighted = real student and staff names, your side only [BRACKETED] = all the model actually receives FERPA and AB 1584 posture documented on the Security page

Included in Core

Policy Refresh

The standing column of what moved.

Because the corpus re-syncs every two weeks, the system already knows what changed. Policy Refresh tells you the new adoptions, the revisions, and the answers those revisions invalidate. "Your AR on suspension changed on July 12. Three of your saved cards cite the old version."

AR 5144.1 Suspension, revisedJul 12 · affects 3 saved cards

BP 5141.52 Suicide Prevention, adoptedJun 28 · new

Ed Code update, AB 1955Jun 20 · legal floor moved

06 · Two views of the same governance

The site leader asks. The cabinet compares.

Site view: principals, directors

Ask, sharpen, record.

Ask in plain language. If one more detail would change the answer, DistrictWise asks for it instead of guessing. Each exchange narrows the card to your actual situation. Save it to the incident, or escalate with the question already written.

You asked

"Do I have to let a parent record the IEP meeting?"

DistrictWise asks back

One detail short

"Did the parent give notice, and how many days ahead? The requirement turns on that."

Card sharpens

Now specific to your case

"Notice arrived 48 hours ahead, so the recording proceeds. Log it and announce it at the top of the meeting."

Cabinet view: superintendent, EA, trustees

Query across districts, contracts included.

"How do our five neighbors handle cell phones?" "What does the neighboring district's agreement say about prep time?" Same engine, wider corpus: peer policy and collective bargaining agreements alongside your own.

Peer district policy Bargaining agreements Board packets Weekly pulse digest

Sample comparison, illustrative

District APhones off, bell to bell, BP 5131

District BSite discretion, AR 5131 rev. 2025-08

District CNo adopted regulation on record

07 · Proof

4.75

/ 5

Blind review by experienced superintendents and education leaders. Every answer scored on a rubric covering legal accuracy, policy alignment, citation quality, practical usefulness and governance safety, then judged against one question: would you put this in front of staff? Verdict: staff-ready, all 24.

Scenarios reviewed24

Cleared for staff use24 of 24

Scored a perfect 518 of 24

Lowest score given4 of 5

Citations verified to source100%

Reference implementation

Western Placer Unified School District. Live beta, August 2026.

From the review

"You nailed the ambiguity here, and this is definitely something that should be elevated."

Reviewed by experienced superintendents and education leaders

On a collective bargaining scenario · 24 scenarios reviewed, July 2026

08 · Pricing

One district. One annual number.

$25,000 to $175,000 per year, based on district size.

Unlimited users at every site. Onboarding and the corpus build are included, and there is no new infrastructure to stand up.

Core Every site leader

Starts at the base of the range for a single-site or small district.

Answer cards across all five layers, unlimited site users, the citation and band engine, saved cards, Policy Refresh, and the two week corpus re-sync.

Run it on your policies

Cabinet Adds the CBA layer

Priced on the same range, one step up from your district's Core number.

Everything in Core, plus cross-district and bargaining agreement queries, the weekly pulse digest, and board and executive assistant seats.

Talk to us about Cabinet

Founding cohort pricing holds through December 2026 · onboarding and corpus build included · no new infrastructure required

Coming next

The sidebar. Wherever you already work.

A browser sidebar that follows you into the student information system, the incident form, the email you are drafting to a parent. Highlight the situation in front of you and the governing layers come to you, without a tab switch and without retyping the case.

In development. Founding cohort districts get it first, at no additional cost.