Dracut Wants $2,950 Before Anyone Sees Its 45 Agreements

A letter from Superintendent Steven Stone says Dracut found 45 responsive settlement agreements — the same request Tantasqua filled for free — and will produce them only after 120 billed hours are paid for.

The letter is dated September 23, 2026. It arrived September 25, mailed under the signature of Superintendent Steven Stone from a district where, by this week’s arithmetic, every single settlement agreement is worth exactly 64.44 dollars of somebody’s invoice math — $2,950 divided by the 45 responsive agreements the letter says the district found. The letter does not dispute the request. It constrains it: 120 hours of careful search work at $25 an hour is what Dracut wants for this stack, and the stack stays sealed until the check lands. This is the same request Tantasqua produced for free on the same day, and four other districts have priced the very same letter at $75, $150, $300 and $750.

The Numbers First

• $2,950. The largest fee estimate of the entire project — the number under which Dracut’s 45 responsive agreements currently sit.
• 120 hours of search, segregation and redaction is the labor claim behind it: the largest single-hours claim on the board, by a factor of four over the next largest (Amesbury’s 30 hours).
• 45 agreements is Dracut’s own count of what it will produce — the most agreements any district has yet claimed to hold. Compare what Dracut charges to look with what Tantasqua actually produced, free, on the same day: 45 pages of records.
• 2.7 hours per agreement is Dracut’s arithmetic — 120 billed hours divided by 45 agreements. The rate is the statutory $25; the only variable Dracut has added is time.
• $25 an hour is the statutory rate every responding district bills. Dracut eliminates the first two hours (that alone puts a $50 discount at the bottom of the bill) and adds “per-page printing charges” that remain, in true Dracut style, unspecified so far.
• 2 days between the letter’s September 23 date and its September 25 arrival. The paperwork itself was fast. The records will be slower.
• $75 to $750 is the range the other four fee-estimate districts have drawn around the same request; Dracut’s total is roughly four times the largest of those and nearly forty times the cheapest.

What Dracut Said

The letter from Superintendent Stone doesn’t argue with the request — it does arithmetic. At roughly 120 hours of search work at $25 an hour, Dracut’s estimate says a couple of work weeks move from a staff office to the requester; the 45 agreements it identifies as responsive stay unproduced until payment, and per-page printing is additional. The full response letter is published as the district sent it: Dracut PRR response (PDF).

A district can say a lot with a number. In this one, they’ve specified the labor — search, segregation and redaction, with the first two hours free — and the material cost as an asterisk: price of printing per page unstated. There’s no file count here, only the claim of hours. Dracut claims to have found 45 responsive agreements, which is exactly what the project’s request was built to surface — and its letter says all of it will be produced as a results of the arithmetic, once the hours are bought in advance. Compare that position with what else is on the Massachusetts board this week. Pentucket itemized 6.0 hours down to the half with no additional demand beyond $150. Peabody asked for $300 before it looks — one-fourth of what Dracut wants on similar paper. And the district paying the largest total so far — $2,950 — on the project’s largest claimed holdings still frames its own hoard hugeness for free, at the same hourly rate as everyone else: that’s the explicit point of comparison.

How It Compares

The running total, cheapest to most expensive:

• Tantasqua Regional — $0, no fee at all, and the project’s first production: 45 pages, ten documents, published.
• Berlin-Boylston — $75, three itemized hours, waiver denied in writing.
• Pentucket — $150, six hours itemized to the half-hour.
• Peabody — $300, fourteen hours, invoice with the letter.
• Amesbury — $750, thirty hours, under appeal to the Supervisor of Public Records.
• Dracut — $2,950, 120 hours, 45 agreements, and nowhere to look until $2,950 arrives: Dracut charges $2,950 for 45 agreements.

The pattern holds across the board now, and Dracut emphasizes every line of it: all five districts that have priced the request bill the same statutory $25 hourly rate; the first two hours are a giveaway at Dracut and Peabody but unbudgeted elsewhere; itemized letters (Berlin-Boylston’s 3 hours, Pentucket’s 6) propose work in increments, bare statements (Dracut’s) announce it in bulk; and precisely one district on the board produced records instead of a price — and charged zero. That one is Tantasqua.

The running dispatch where this letter first got its widest airing, with Tantasqua’s free production on record the same day, is the project’s first-records update; the board itself — every district’s fee, hours, and any production — lives on the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project, and the tracker logs Dracut’s own price unedited, where the status column now reads as the week’s most expensive estimate.

What This Means for Parents

• Dracut says 45 agreements exist — meaning 45 agreements exist. A district that confirms its holdings has already answered half of your discovery question. The answer is now on the project tracker, whether or not you ever pay to see the result.
• The hours are the negotiating term, not the rate. Every district bills $25. Dracut’s twist is 120 hours for 45 documents — 2.7 hours each. Ask any district that hands you a bare total for the itemized math behind it.
• The first two hours are free in some letters and absent in others. Dracut and Peabody discount them; Tantasqua charged nothing at all; Berlin-Boylston bills from hour one. That discrepancy is law-plus-policy, not arithmetic, and it is now written down.
• A fee estimate is appealable. The Amesbury appeal set the roadmap; a bare-total estimate like Dracut’s is exactly the type the amendments’ appeal process was built for. Note the district response date as you file.
• Four districts’ prices surround this one. Whether Dracut’s $2,950 is driven by a large file or a conservative ordering is unknowable until itemization arrives — compare against the same request in Berlin-Boylston, Peabody, Pentucket, and Amesbury to see how other districts handled the same work.

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Sources

• Dracut Public Schools, letter dated September 23, 2026 from Supt. Steven Stone, received September 25, 2026, identifying 45 responsive agreements and estimating 120 hours at $25/hr (first two hours free), plus per-page printing charges; self-hosted PDF, published as received.
• Kim Andre, Benefits Coordinator, Tantasqua Regional School District/Union 61, email of September 25, 2026, attaching the 45-page production published free the same day.
• Massachusetts Public Records Law, G.L. c. 66, § 10; 950 C.M.R. 32.00.
• Champa v. Weston Public Schools, 473 Mass. 86 (2015).
• Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project tracker, current as of September 25, 2026: 65 districts, 18 acknowledged, 37 awaiting first response, 4 routed or re-sent, 4 fee-estimate responses, 1 appeal 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.