Feature: School District Search

Sometimes I want to use a city or town name as a search term to determine if there are cases about a specific school district. When it comes to BSEA decisions and rulings, a school district search is a problem for most search engines. Often one decision will reference another, and another district name. For example, a decision about Sudbury might reference a decision about Concord. If I want to search for matters involving Concord only, most search engines are not helpful.

Also, hyphens often trip up search engines. If I want all the decisions and rulings in Concord and Concord-Carlisle, I might need to conduct multiple searches.

With Special Education Law, I have tweaked the algorithm to prioritize certain search terms, like city and town names in Massachusetts, to make searching by district easier. If I search for Concord, all the decisions and rulings about that district (and Concord-Carlisle) come up on top. Any decisions and rulings that only reference Concord or Concord-Carlisle appear lower on the search results.