Natick’s $275 Fee and 30-Day Extension Are Now Under Appeal

About 300 pages, two hours of search, three hours of attorney review at $75 an hour — and a petition for thirty extra business days. The appeal and opposition went up the same day the letter arrived.

Natick Public Schools answered the project’s September 21, 2026 request on September 28 with the most precisely itemized estimate on the board — and a catch. The response from Assistant Superintendent and Public Records Officer Erin Miller identifies approximately 300 responsive pages, walks the arithmetic line by line, and totals $275. It also discloses that Natick has filed a fee-and-time petition with the Supervisor of Public Records — docketed as SPR26/4044 — asking for thirty additional business days to produce the records. Parent Data Force filed a § 10A appeal of the estimate and an opposition to the petition the same day, September 28, 2026.

The Numbers First

• $275. Two search hours at $25 ($50) plus three chargeable review hours at $75 ($225).
• About 300 pages, at the letter’s own one-minute-per-page assumption — five hours of review, of which the first two are free, leaving three billable.
• $75 an hour for attorney review. The letter says counsel’s own rate runs “in or around $270,” and that the district “will request that the Supervisor allow it to charge $75 per hour to complete the review” — triple the search rate.
• 30 extra business days, by petition docketed SPR26/4044 — Natick’s petition was filed the same week as East Bridgewater’s, in materially the same language.
• 2 filings, 1 day. Appeal and opposition both filed September 28, the day the response arrived.
• $0 paid. The letter notes the fee may be reduced if the request is narrowed — the same off-ramp Berlin-Boylston took on September 29.

The letter’s arithmetic, verbatim: “The District has spent 2 hours searching for the records for a total of $50.” And: “$225 plus the time to search is a total of $275.”

What Natick Said — and What the Appeal Asks

Natick’s letter is the board’s most itemized: it names the tasks, the volume, the per-page assumption, the free-hour policy, both rates, and even counsel’s market rate. What it does not resolve is why attorney review at $75 an hour is necessary at all for settlement agreements that Massachusetts’ highest court held are public records once personally identifiable information is redacted, why thirty extra business days are needed when other districts answered the same request in ten days or less, and why prior redaction work on what our filing identifies as an overlapping Boston Globe settlement-records production would not be credited against the billed hours. The appeal asks the Supervisor to require enough identifying and workload information to evaluate the attorney-review assertion rather than accepting an unsupported reference to unnamed clients, to require Natick to account for and credit that prior work, and to direct prompt production with student PII redacted as required by law.

The full paper trail is public: the standardized request as sent (PDF), the district’s fee-estimate response (PDF), and the appeal and petition opposition as filed (PDF). Natick is copied as 950 C.M.R. 32.08(1)(g) requires, and the records request process in Natick 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.
• Natick — $275, about 300 pages, two search hours, three attorney-review hours, and a 30-day petition: this appeal (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 — appealed.
• 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

• Itemization is checkable arithmetic. 300 pages at one minute per page, two free hours, three chargeable hours at $75 — every number in Natick’s letter can be recomputed, and should be.
• An attorney rate needs a justification, not a label. Ask what counsel is reviewing that a records officer cannot, and at what hourly cost compared to the district’s own staff.
• Prior work should be credited, not billed twice. If responsive records overlap another production, the hours already spent collecting and redacting them do not get charged again.
• Narrowing is leverage. Natick’s own letter says the fee may be reduced if the request is narrowed — Berlin-Boylston’s fee dropped from $75 to $50 on exactly that path.
• Petitions for time are public decisions. SPR26/4044 is on the Supervisor’s docket, and the opposition to it is part of the record.

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Sources

• Natick Public Schools, response letter from Asst. Supt./Public Records Officer Erin Miller, transmitted September 28, 2026 (letter dated September 29, 2026; self-hosted PDF published as received): approximately 300 responsive pages; 2 search hours at $25/hour ($50) plus 3 chargeable review hours at $75/hour ($225) = $275; counsel rate described as “in or around $270”; fee-and-time petition disclosed, seeking 30 additional business days.
• Parent Data Force, standardized public-records request to Natick Public Schools, sent September 21, 2026.
• Parent Data Force, § 10A appeal of the estimate and opposition to the fee-and-time petition, filed September 28, 2026; the petition is docketed as SPR26/4044.
• Massachusetts Public Records Law, G.L. c. 66, § 10, including § 10(b)(viii) 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.