Swansea Cut Its Fee Estimate by $175. We Appealed It Anyway, the Same Evening.

After Parent Data Force narrowed the period, Swansea Public Schools rebuilt its good-faith estimate from $500 to $325 — thirteen itemized hours, no reproduction charge. Hours later, both estimates were under appeal, with the Supervisor’s own Dracut and Weymouth determinations attached as exhibits, because not one of the thirteen hours yet has a record count or a page count underneath it.

This is what a fee cut looks like when the arithmetic improves and the basis does not. On October 13, 2026, Records Access Officer Scott Holcomb sent Parent Data Force a revised estimate for the District’s response to our September 23 request for final written student-dispute agreements: $500 became $325, twenty claimed hours became thirteen, at the municipal ceiling of $25 an hour, with $0 for electronic reproduction. At 10:14 that same evening, under G.L. c. 66, § 10A, we appealed both estimates.

The tracker row for the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project now reads Appeal filed for Swansea, with the District’s revised estimate and the appeal as filed published on the row.

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The two estimates, line by line

Both numbers are the District’s own, itemized task by task. Here is what changed between them:

• Identify sources and set search parameters: 1 hour before, 1 hour after. Unmoved.
• Search and retrieve records: 5 hours before, 3 hours after.
• Identify responsive records and remove duplicates: 3 hours before, 3 hours after. Unmoved.
• Review for legally protected student information: 4 hours before, 2 hours after.
• Legally required segregation and redaction: 5 hours before, 3 hours after.
• Final quality-control review and electronic production: 2 hours before, 1 hour after.

Twenty hours and $500 became thirteen hours and $325. The District also answered the question the narrowing was meant to answer: it will use the cutoff date from Swansea’s own prior Boston Globe production — the 2023 endpoint we asked it to start from — “once that date is confirmed,” and the scope will include general-education matters, agreements “regardless of the title used.” Electronic reproduction: $0. And a candor worth keeping on the record: “This remains a preliminary estimate rather than a charge for work already completed,” with the final charge to fall if the work runs short.

We said thank you for the $175, in the appeal, in writing. Then we appealed anyway — because a cut that keeps seven of thirteen hours before anyone has counted a page is a price, not a workload.

What the appeal actually says

The appeal does not dispute that genuine student-privacy redactions may be chargeable, or that Swansea — a municipality under 20,000 people — may bill from its first hour. It presses seven numbered objections, each asking the Supervisor to require a fact the District has not yet supplied:

1. No record or page count; no testable time basis. The estimate identifies no number of responsive agreements, no pages, no typical length, no minutes-per-page or per-document assumptions. Without them, the two hours of protected-information review and three hours of redaction cannot be evaluated — and cutting nine hours to five does not cure the missing workload basis.
2. The narrowed start date is still unresolved. The District will use its Boston Globe cutoff “once that date is confirmed” yet stated a precise 13-hour charge. The appeal asks the Supervisor to direct Swansea to name the cutoff and the expected volumes inside the resulting period.
3. Seven hours before any redaction. One hour to identify sources, three to search, three to deduplicate — $175 spent on finding agreements the District itself must already route through legal, superintendent, special-education or BSEA files. Which custodians? What methodology? Why is responsiveness review three hours for already-final documents?
4. Mandatory redaction versus repeated review. FERPA, the state student-record rules and Champa v. Weston may protect identifying information — but § 10(d)(iii) bars fees for segregation or redaction not required by law, and the appeal asks the Supervisor to make Swansea separate the two and stop double-counting across responsiveness review, confidentiality review, redaction and quality control.
5. The final QC hour is not self-justifying. What distinct, legally chargeable task survives after the review and redaction hours, and how much of it is ordinary forwarding?
6. The $25 rate needs a task-specific basis. The ceiling is lawful only against the lowest-paid capable classification; the appeal asks which classification covers which hour — without asking for anyone’s payroll.
7. The public-interest waiver was never answered. The request invoked § 10(d)(v) from the start; the District’s letters are silent. The appeal recognizes the Supervisor cannot compel a waiver and asks her to require that Swansea expressly consider one.

Two exhibits went with it: the Supervisor’s determinations in SPR26/4024 (Dracut, October 9) and SPR26/4062 (Weymouth, October 13) — the same office, the same request wording, the same defect. Dracut was told to build its estimate on search hours, pages and minutes per page; Weymouth had two thirds of its estimate struck for redaction hours billed without the petition the law requires, in a determination covered here. The appeal asks the same demonstration from Swansea — and asks that our willingness to narrow never be read as a concession that either estimate was valid. The docket number is pending acknowledgment.

Why a cut can still be unapprovable

Swansea’s revised estimate is honest work: six tasks, a rate, a zero, a promise to true up at the end. What it is not is supportable — the law lets a district charge the actual cost of compliance, and “actual” is a fact about pages and records, not a feeling about effort. That is the distinction two districts have already lost in front of the same Supervisor inside five days — Weymouth’s $350, Dracut’s $2,950, reported when it landed in Dracut’s fee appeal coverage — and it is the question Swansea has now been made to answer in writing. Across this project, 32 districts have stated fees totalling $44,466.20, and 104 letters have gone out; the tracker where every one of those rows lives is the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project.

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What This Means for Parents

• A reduced estimate is still an estimate of unproven work. Swansea cut real money — $175 — and got appealed the same night anyway, for one reason: no page count. If you accept a revised fee, ask the same question the appeal asks: how many records, how many pages, how many minutes each?
• Narrowing is leverage, not surrender. We shortened the period and the price fell — and we told the Supervisor in writing that narrowing was not a concession that either number was valid. Do both: trade scope, preserve the objection.
• “Once that date is confirmed” is a hole in the bill. An estimate whose start date is TBD is priced on a guess. Make the district fix the window before it fixes the hours.
• The redaction line is where the law bites hardest. Fees for segregating or redacting are only chargeable when required by law — § 10(d)(iii). Ask which hours are mandatory redaction, which are review, and whether the same page gets counted twice.
• Every exhibit is public. This appeal carried two prior determinations as attachments, and the tracker row carries the District’s estimate and our appeal as filed on the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project. If your district is not on it, write to the project and it becomes another row on the board.

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Sources

• Swansea Public Schools, good-faith itemized fee estimate of Oct. 6, 2026 (20 hours at $25 per hour, $500) and revised estimate of Oct. 13, 2026 (13 hours at $25 per hour, $325; $0 electronic reproduction; Boston Globe production cutoff to establish the revised period once confirmed), from Records Access Officer Scott Holcomb.
• Parent Data Force, public records request of Sept. 23, 2026; scope-narrowing letter of Oct. 6, 2026; public records appeal under G.L. c. 66, § 10A filed Oct. 13, 2026, appealing both estimates with seven numbered objections, exhibits, and requested relief.
• Supervisor of Records, determinations SPR26/4024 (Dracut Public Schools, Oct. 9, 2026) and SPR26/4062 (Weymouth Public Schools, Oct. 13, 2026), attached to the appeal as exhibits.
• Tracker row for Swansea Public Schools — status Appeal filed, superseded estimate $500 at 20 claimed hours, current estimate $325 at 13 claimed hours, docket pending acknowledgment — on the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project.
• Project totals cited: 65 districts requested, 104 letters sent, 32 stated fees totalling $44,466.20, per the tracker’s computed statistics.