How Judson ISD School District Updated its Records Request Process with CivicPlus®

A Matter of Time

Judson Independent School District is the largest school district in the San Antonio area, with an enrollment of approximately 22,000 students covering a 56-square-mile footprint. Judson High School has won six Texas State High School Football titles and has the longest active streak of winning seasons in the state of Texas at 43. The district identified that their time-consuming process of managing FOIA requests was taking vital time away from other equally pressing issues, so they went in search of a records request software to help speed up their process. That’s when they found NextRequest, now part of the CivicPlus Civic Experience platform.

From Old School to New School

Prior to CivicPlus (now NextRequest), Steve Linscomb, Director of Communications, estimated that he spent up to 50 percent of his work day on open records requests. The process would begin with the district pulling each request from an electronic form. Then, they would print out the requests and write updates and status checks on each of the paper forms. Once a week, they would meet to go over any pending requests. This meeting could go on for an hour or more, depending on how many active requests they had going on at the time. Finally, they would either call or email those individuals from whom information was being requested to keep them up to date on any approaching deadlines.

Having identified that their process for fulfilling requests was time-consuming and manual, Judson ISD wanted to eliminate manual reminders for deadlines and extensions. They also wanted to keep all of their information in one place. So they went in search of a solution to make their processes more efficient, and NextRequest fit those requirements perfectly.

Easy as ABC

After implementing NextRequest, Steve estimates that records requests take 40% less time to fulfill, which he says is “huge!” Now, Steve uses time saved on managing FOIA requests (or ORRs in Texas) to focus on marketing, board meeting prep, and keeping up with district and school events that need covering and publicity. As Steve puts it, NextRequest “has saved me time, paper, and worry about staying up to date with the status of each request…that’s major!”

Visit https://judson-isd.nextrequest.com/