On Oct. 7 the Supervisor closed our Amesbury appeal against us: our standardized request wording does not reasonably describe the records sought.
This is the most consequential ruling in the Student Settlement Records Project, because it is not about a district’s conduct. It is about a sentence we wrote and sent, in identical form, to dozens of Massachusetts districts.
On October 7, 2026 the Supervisor of Records issued a determination in SPR26/3972, the appeal Parent Data Force filed against Amesbury Public Schools’ response to our September 21, 2026 request. The determination closed the appeal, and it closed it against the requestor.
What the determination decided
The request we send to every district asks for:
> all final or executed student-related agreements resolving, compromising, settling, memorializing, or otherwise disposing of a dispute, claim, complaint, appeal, due-process matter, grievance, or other contested educational issue
The Supervisor found that phrase — read together with the nine agreement types listed beneath it — does not satisfy the requirement in G.L. c. 66, § 10(a)(i) that a request reasonably describe the records sought. The appeal was closed on that ground. Two practical consequences follow, and they both matter more than the ruling’s tone:
- Amesbury’s fee estimate of $750 for 30 hours of employee time at $25/hour stands as the request now reads.
- Because the City of Amesbury’s population in the most-recent decennial census is under 20,000, the municipality is not required to give the first two hours of work away. Amesbury owed no free time, so there is no two-hour credit to subtract from that figure.
The remedy offered is clarification. The determination states that once we provide the needed clarification, the School must respond within ten business days.
The standard the Supervisor applied
The determination quotes Chawla v. Department of Revenue (Suffolk Superior Court, No. 1784CV02087, Jan. 23, 2019), which holds that the reasonable-description requirement means a requester must identify documents or categories of documents “with sufficient particularity that government employees will be able to understand exactly what they are looking for, and then make a prompt production.” Chawla adds that requests “articulated with very broad language that calls upon non-lawyer administrative personnel to interpret the scope of what is sought, and then make fine judgments about what documents are and are not sufficiently ‘related’ to the category of materials requested, will not satisfy this statutory standard.”
That second sentence is the one aimed at us, and it is worth quoting honestly: our request is addressed to records clerks and administrative assistants, not to lawyers, and it asks them to decide what “or otherwise disposing of” reaches.
The determination reasons that the introductory phrase is open-ended, and that the enumerated list beneath it does not cure it. Our reconsideration argues the opposite: that a request must be read as a whole, and that the list of agreement types, the express exclusion of staff and employment records, the fixed date window and the instruction to redact student information all narrow what a custodian has to find.
The evidence we put in front of the Supervisor
A ruling that no custodian can understand a sentence is testable, because in this project the same sentence went to district after district. Our reconsideration request filed the following the same day:
- Dracut Public Schools stated that forty-five (45) responsive agreements had already been identified from the same request — and priced the work at $2,950 for 120 hours.
- Springfield Public Schools said its School Department must compile around 90 agreements potentially responsive, then review and redact student information.
- Tantasqua Regional School District received substantially the same request and produced responsive settlement and resolution records two days later, without stating a fee.
- Amesbury’s own September 23 response described a concrete search method — recordkeeping software, paper records, scanning, compilation, reproduction — and estimated thirty hours split among search, compilation and reproduction.
The argument is narrow and it is not “other districts found these records, so Amesbury must have them too.” It is that multiple independent custodians, none of them lawyers, read this language and produced a countable number of documents. That is objective evidence the category is understandable, and Chawla‘s test is whether employees can understand what they are looking for.
We are not claiming those districts’ records are Amesbury’s records. We are claiming the sentence can be understood, and we named who understood it.
A date on the record that does not match the record
The determination refers to “Mr. Ford’s July 17, 2026 appeal to this office.” The Amesbury appeal was submitted September 23, 2026 — the same day the School answered, and two days after the request went out. There is no July filing in this matter: the settlement-records requests in this project went out between September 18 and September 23, 2026, so no appeal in it could predate them.
We raised this in the reconsideration as a clerical correction and said plainly that it is not our principal ground. It is worth recording anyway, because a determination that misstates when a party appeared is a determination built on a file nobody has checked, and because the requester — not the district, not the Supervisor — is the only party in this project with an incentive to notice it.
What we did next
Three things, all on October 7:
- We filed a request for reconsideration of SPR26/3972, arguing that the reasonable-description finding should be revisited in light of the request read as a whole and the comparator record.
- In the same filing, and without conceding that the original request is deficient, we supplied the clarification the determination invited: final or executed written settlement, resolution, mediation, MOU/MOA, stipulation, consent, side or similar agreements — with material amendments and addenda — entered during the stated period that finally resolve or memorialize the resolution of a student-specific educational dispute involving the district, including special-education, Section 504, ADA educational-access, discipline and exclusion, civil-rights, bullying and harassment, enrollment, services, placement, reimbursement and transportation disputes. That restatement names the same categories more compactly. It does not expand the request.
- We asked the Supervisor to treat that clarification as curing any remaining ambiguity and to require a substantive response within ten business days without restarting the matter from the beginning, and to reach the fee questions the closed appeal never decided: itemization, the production timeframe, and the waiver we requested under G.L. c. 66, § 10(d)(v).
The Public Records Division opened SPR26/3972 for reconsideration on October 7, 2026, and stated that a decision is due fifteen business days from the day the request was received, per the timeframes in SPR Bulletin 04-17.
What we are not doing is quietly rewriting the standardized request and pretending this ruling is somebody else’s problem. The sentence at issue is in the form every district in this project received. Whatever the reconsideration decides, parents using that template are entitled to know that a custodian can answer “this does not describe records” and that the answer may end the appeal rather than start the production.
What parents should take from it
A refusal on your wording is an argument, not a verdict. Amesbury did not say the agreements do not exist. It did not say they are exempt. It said our sentence was unclear, and the Supervisor agreed on that record. Documents that a district holds remain responsive to a request that describes them properly.
Write the categories, not the concept. The list under our introductory phrase — settlement agreements, resolution agreements, MOUs, MOAs, mediation agreements, stipulations and consent agreements, side letters, material amendments — is the part of this request that survived. Champa v. Weston Public Schools, 473 Mass. 86 (2015), is the case every district in this project now cites, and it holds that protected student information justifies redaction, not categorical withholding: the segregable non-exempt portions of an executed settlement agreement are disclosable. The Supervisor applied that in Alexander v. Wellesley Public Schools, SPR17/661 (May 25, 2017), rejecting the argument that Champa reaches only out-of-district placements.
Expect a fee, and ask for the arithmetic. Amesbury’s $750 came with a thirty-hour estimate. Where a municipality has 20,000 people or fewer, the statute does not force the first two hours to be free — so a small town’s number starts at hour one. In a town over 20,000, a written estimate that never shows where the two free hours went is not an itemized good-faith estimate, and saying so in the appeal is what we have done in every district where the math was missing.
The right to appeal does not disappear. The determination notes that pursuing an administrative appeal does not limit the remedies available in court, and that this office shares jurisdiction with the Superior Court. We have not gone to court in this project and are not announcing that we will.
The tracker records every district’s current status, fee figure, docket and note, including the districts whose productions we are holding and why: the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project.
Earlier coverage of this appeal is at Amesbury’s $750 Estimate Is Now an Appeal; the fee-rate rulings that have gone the other way are at Three Districts, One Ruling: The Supervisor Caps Attorney Review at $75; and the district that answered this same request for free is at Tantasqua Handed Over the Records: 45 Pages, No Fee.
The project is parent-led and grows by request. If your district is not on the tracker, write to the project and it becomes another row on the board.
Sources
- Supervisor of Records determination, SPR26/3972, issued October 7, 2026, to the Superintendent of Schools, Amesbury Public Schools.
- Parent Data Force request for reconsideration, SPR26/3972, filed October 7, 2026, with attachments: the original Amesbury request, Amesbury’s September 23, 2026 response, Dracut’s response identifying 45 responsive agreements, Springfield’s response identifying approximately 90 potentially responsive agreements, and Tantasqua’s production.
- Public Records Division notice opening SPR26/3972 for reconsideration, October 7, 2026, citing SPR Bulletin 04-17 timeframes.
- Chawla v. Department of Revenue, Suffolk Superior Court No. 1784CV02087 (Jan. 23, 2019).
- Champa v. Weston Public Schools, 473 Mass. 86 (2015); Alexander v. Wellesley Public Schools, SPR17/661 (May 25, 2017).
- G.L. c. 66, § 10(a)(i) (reasonable description); § 10(b)(viii) (written good-faith estimate); § 10(d)(iii) (two free hours where the municipality exceeds 20,000); § 10(d)(v) (fee waiver in the public interest); § 10A (appeal).
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.