East Bridgewater’s $350 Fee and 30-Day Extension Are Now Under Appeal

About six responsive documents, a two-rate estimate — and a petition asking the Supervisor of Records for thirty extra business days. The fee and the petition were both answered the same day.

East Bridgewater Public Schools answered the project’s September 18, 2026 request ten days later, and the September 28 response from Superintendent and Records Access Officer Gina Williams did two things at once. It priced the request at $350 — five search hours at $25 an hour plus three review hours at $75 an hour against about six responsive documents — and it filed a fee-and-time petition with the Supervisor of Public Records asking for thirty additional business days to produce them. Parent Data Force filed a § 10A appeal of the estimate and an opposition to the petition the same day, September 28, 2026. Both are pending at the Supervisor; no docket numbers had issued as of publication.

The Numbers First

• $350. Five search hours at $25 plus three review hours at $75 — for about six responsive documents.
• Two rates in one letter. Review time billed at $75 an hour — triple the $25 rate the same letter uses for search, and a rate no district on this board had billed for any task before this week.
• About 6 documents. The identical request drew 45 agreements from Dracut and roughly 300 pages from Natick; East Bridgewater’s search found about six.
• 30 extra business days, by petition — on top of the response time the statute already provides. East Bridgewater and Natick filed matching petitions the same week, and our filing includes a side-by-side comparison showing the two petitions share template language.
• 2 filings, 1 day. The appeal and the petition opposition both went up September 28, the day the response arrived.
• $0 paid. No production has started.

What East Bridgewater Said — and What the Appeal Asks

The response letter identifies about six responsive documents and itemizes the work at two rates — 5 search hours at $25/hour, 3 review hours at $75/hour, $350 total — while the accompanying fee-and-time petition asks the Supervisor to add thirty business days to the production window. The appeal contests the estimate’s itemization, most directly the three review hours billed at triple the search rate against a production of about six documents; it also requires the district to address the public-interest fee-waiver request under G.L. c. 66, §§ 10(c) and 10(d)(iv) in any revised estimate. The opposition answers the petition directly: a district that needs thirty extra days for six documents has not explained the ten it already took, and the appeal asks that any readily releasable records or segregable portions be produced promptly while anything genuinely disputed is resolved.

The full paper trail is public: the standardized request as sent (PDF), the district’s fee-estimate response and fee-and-time petition (PDF), and the appeal and opposition as filed (PDF). East Bridgewater is copied as 950 C.M.R. 32.08(1)(g) requires, and the records request process in East Bridgewater is now a pending matter at the Supervisor of Public Records.

The petition itself gets its own write-up: Two Districts, One Petition — East Bridgewater and Natick asked for thirty extra business days in the same words.

How It Compares

The running board, cheapest to most expensive:

• Tantasqua Regional — $0: 45 pages produced, no fee, the project’s first production.
• Berlin-Boylston — $75, reduced to $50 after the district accepted a narrowed request on September 29.
• North Attleborough — $100: six hours, capped by the superintendent as a cooperative accommodation; a full public-interest waiver was requested September 29.
• Pentucket — $150: six hours itemized to the half-hour.
• Natick — $275: about 300 pages, two search hours, three attorney-review hours, and a 30-day petition — appealed (SPR26/4044).
• Peabody — $300: fourteen hours, invoice with the letter.
• East Bridgewater — $350, about six documents, a two-rate estimate, and its own 30-day petition: this appeal.
• Weymouth — $350: a portal fee with a twenty-day withdrawal clock — appealed (SPR26/4062).
• Westwood — $520: 13 hours at $40 an hour, after its own acknowledgment capped the rate at $25 — appealed.
• Amesbury — $750: thirty hours at the statutory ceiling — appealed September 23.
• Dracut — $2,950, 120 hours for 45 already-identified agreements: appealed (SPR26/4024).

One district produced records for nothing. Ten priced the identical request from $50 to $2,950. Six of those prices are now before the Supervisor of Public Records. The whole board — fees, hours, productions, appeals: Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project.

What This Means for Parents

• Two-rate estimates deserve a question per rate. Which task, which employee class, which authority for $75 review hours — three $25 hours by another name is still three hours, and the letter has to say whose time it is.
• Deadlines are not the district’s to extend. A fee-and-time petition is decided by the Supervisor, not the district — and a parent can oppose it the same day it is filed.
• Run the per-record math. $350 for about six documents is roughly $58 per record; on any estimate you receive, divide the fee by the records actually identified.
• Volume claims are checkable against the board. 45 agreements in Dracut, roughly 300 pages in Natick, about six here — the same one-page request, three different stories.
• Appeals and oppositions are separate filings. This case needed both, filed the day the response arrived; neither waits for the other.

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Sources

• East Bridgewater Public Schools, response from Supt./RAO Gina Williams dated September 28, 2026 (fee-estimate letter and fee-and-time petition; self-hosted PDF published as received): about six responsive documents; 5 search hours at $25/hour plus 3 review hours at $75/hour = $350; petition seeking 30 additional business days.
• Parent Data Force, standardized public-records request to East Bridgewater Public Schools, sent September 18, 2026.
• Parent Data Force, § 10A appeal of the estimate and opposition to the fee-and-time petition, filed September 28, 2026; both docket-pending as of publication; includes a side-by-side comparison of the East Bridgewater and Natick petitions.
• Massachusetts Public Records Law, G.L. c. 66, § 10, including § 10(b)(viii), §§ 10(c), 10(d)(iv), and § 10A; 950 C.M.R. 32.07(2), 32.08.
• Champa v. Weston Public Schools, 473 Mass. 86 (2015).
• Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project tracker, current as of September 29, 2026: 65 districts, 17 acknowledged, 33 awaiting first response, 3 routed or re-sent, 4 fee-estimate responses, 6 appeals filed, 1 production published.

The project is parent-led and grows by request. If your district is not on the tracker yet, write to the project and it becomes another row on the board.