Introducing CSBTP V1: A source-grounded research assistant for school board transparency

Today, I am releasing CSBTP V1, the first version of the Claremont School Board Transparency Project research assistant. CSBTP V1 is built to make it easier to navigate board packets, minutes, policies, and related documents, and to connect local records with statewide context from NHDOE data. It is designed to help the public and stakeholders ask concrete questions and get answers that point back to the record.

• Detailed instructions are available here.

What CSBTP V1 is

CSBTP V1 is a ChatGPT-based research assistant extended with two primary evidence sources:

• NHDOE data obtained from iPlatform on December 7, 2025, stored as Excel worksheets and consolidated into a single workbook for easier analysis.
• Claremont School Board (CSB) documents captured from the SAU6 website and Google Drive folders on January 23, 2026, packaged into larger PDF collections for practical upload and search.

In other words, CSBTP V1 is meant to answer questions by reading the documents you have, then citing exactly where the answer came from.

What it can do

CSBTP V1’s capabilities are intentionally practical and record-first:

• Search inside PDFs to find the exact page or lines relevant to your question, then cite them.
• Extract figures and tables, and summarize or compare them (e.g., totals, line items, or schedule values).
• Analyze spreadsheets in the attached Excel workbook (filtering, pivoting, totals, trend checks) and explain results with explicit references to what was used.
• Follow a consistent workflow: search the uploaded files, answer using what it finds, then attach citations that point to the relevant document section.

CSBTP V1 is also explicit about its trade-offs: it may respond more slowly because it consults the data first, but the intent is to avoid inventing answers and instead “recite and cite the record.”

Intended use

CSBTP V1 is built to support governance with an “increased level of democracy” by lowering the cost of finding, quoting, and comparing official records.

Typical uses include:

• Budget and finance questions: revenues, expenditures, variances, and schedule totals (with citations to the line items).
• Staffing and compensation questions: local payroll or staffing documents compared to statewide tables in the NHDOE dataset.
• Policy and procedure questions: locate and summarize policy language while citing the exact lines that matter.

A note on “iPlatform” in CSBTP V1

In this GPT’s configuration, the term iPlatform refers specifically to the contents of iPlatform20251207-clean.xlsx (even though some PDFs use “iPlatform” to mean the NHDOE portal, which CSBTP treats as a separate meaning unless you tell it otherwise).

Where to find it and what you need

CSBTP V1 runs on ChatGPT and can be found in OpenAI’s GPT directory by searching for CSBTP. The document describing it notes that it is free to use, and that you only need a (free) OpenAI account to run ChatGPT and access it.

Example questions you can ask (and what you should expect back)

Here are a couple of real-style prompts taken from the CSBTP examples:

• “How do employee salaries in Claremont compare to the state-wide data in iPlatform?”
• “What were total revenues in that schedule?”

In both cases, the intended output is the same pattern: find the relevant passage or table, answer directly from it, and include citations so you can verify the claim in context.

Keeping it current and extending it.

The project will add new district PDFs weekly as they are published. And, as with any ChatGPT-based workflow, you can extend CSBTP V1 by uploading additional PDFs or structured files, then asking questions that reference both your new materials and the existing evidence base.

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