On Oct. 6 four more Massachusetts districts priced the identical student-settlement-records request. None asked for more time. Three demanded payment before producing anything.
On Oct. 6, 2026, four more Massachusetts districts answered the same request with a bill.
Every one of the four districts below received the identical ask — final or executed student settlement, resolution, memorandum of agreement, and mediation agreements from Sept. 18, 2021 forward, with student identifying information redacted and staff and employment records expressly excluded. Every one of the four priced its answer in dollars. Not one of them asked the Supervisor of Public Records for a fee-and-time petition or for a 30-business-day extension. Three of the four asked for the money before turning over anything.
Every figure below is the district’s own. No district has been ruled on.
The four estimates
- Swansea Public Schools — $500.00 for 20 hours.
- Silver Lake Regional School District — $650.00 for 26 hours.
- Northampton Public Schools — $950.00 for 40 estimated hours, less two statutory free hours.
- Newburyport Public Schools — $68.70 for 2.75 hours to redact 11 agreements.
Together those four figures come to $2,168.70.
Swansea: $500, and a date
Swansea Public Schools priced the search at $500.00 for 20 hours, filed no petition and asked for no extension. The district signalled an Oct. 29, 2026 production date, and asked for payment as a precondition to any response.
An Oct. 29 production date is roughly three weeks past the ten business days the law gives a public body to respond. The district raised it as a schedule, not as a request to the Supervisor, which means there is nothing on the docket for the Supervisor to approve or deny.
Silver Lake: the first time a district said what it is actually charging
Silver Lake Regional School District estimated $650.00 for 26 hours and demanded payment in advance.
The unusual part is what the district disclosed about its own rate. Silver Lake told Parent Data Force that the employee assigned to the work actually makes $31.33 an hour — and billed the $25.00 statutory cap instead.
That disclosure is worth marking. It is the first time in this project that a district has named the real number it is declining to charge. Silver Lake billed the statutory rate, not its own employee’s rate. Whatever else is contested about the estimate, the district did not bill above the cap, and it did not hide what the work actually costs.
Northampton: the largest of the four, and the wrong document
Northampton Public Schools put the largest of the four estimates at $950.00: 40 estimated hours, less the two statutory free hours, or 38 chargeable hours at $25.00.
The arithmetic in the district’s letter is internally consistent. 38 multiplied by $25.00 is $950.00.
The attachment is the problem. The 10-page document that accompanied the response is a court settlement of a minor’s personal-injury claim against the City of Northampton. It carries a medical lien and an attorney’s fee allocation. It is not a student-education settlement agreement. It is not responsive to this request, and it contains a minor’s identifying information.
Parent Data Force is not publishing it, and is recording why. That is our review, not the district’s: a district that attaches the wrong file to a records response does not thereby convert it into a responsive record. The two categories — student settlement agreements, and litigation involving a minor — are not the same, and the second one is not ours to redistribute.
Newburyport: a calculation that does not hold
Newburyport Public Schools estimated $68.70 for 2.75 hours to redact 11 agreements. The district’s own letter states the arithmetic as “2.75 x 25 = 68.70.”
That does not compute. 2.75 multiplied by 25 is $68.75.
The amount is small. The point is not the five cents. It is that the district wrote out a calculation, wrote it wrong, and shipped it. That is the kind of figure that gets paid without being checked — by a district waiting on the money, or by a requester who assumes a billed total has been added up.
The narrow reading of Champa
Newburyport and Andover both read Champa v. Weston Public Schools, 473 Mass. 86 (2015), narrowly. Both argue that settlement agreements fall categorically outside public disclosure when they concern agreements outside out-of-district placements.
Three of these four districts asked for payment before producing records. Under G.L. c. 66, § 10(d), no fee may be charged for the first two hours of search. Two of the four districts billed those two hours anyway — Northampton netted them out explicitly, and Silver Lake’s $650.00 for 26 hours does not show them netted out.
Both positions remain pending before the Supervisor. Neither has been decided.
Where this leaves the project
The four estimates add to $2,168.70, on top of the earlier figures already on the record — Bridgewater-Raynham’s $27,550, Dracut’s $2,950, Whitman-Hanson’s $925, and the smaller estimates behind them. None of the four districts below filed a petition, which means the Supervisor’s docket does not currently contain a live question about their fees or their timelines. That is a different posture from East Bridgewater, Natick and Quincy, all of which have now been capped at $75.00/hour for attorney review.
Each district’s status, fee estimate, hours and docket number is recorded in the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records tracker, which lists the districts that have answered, those that have not, and the documents each has produced. Districts not yet in the tracker can be requested through the project index.
Earlier fee dispatches in this project include East Bridgewater’s $350 Fee and 30-Day Extension Are Now Under Appeal, Two Districts, One Petition: East Bridgewater and Natick Ask for 30 More Days in the Same Words and $27,550 for 18,900 Pages: Bridgewater-Raynham’s Estimate Is the Largest in the Settlement Records Project.
Three of these four districts asked for payment before producing records. Under G.L. c. 66, § 10(d), a public body may not charge a fee for the first 100 hours of search absent a determination by the Supervisor that the fee is warranted. A fee estimate is not a determination.
Sources
- Swansea Public Schools, fee estimate of $500.00 for 20 hours with a stated production date of Oct. 29, 2026 and payment requested as a precondition to response, Oct. 6, 2026.
- Silver Lake Regional School District, fee estimate of $650.00 for 26 hours, disclosing the assigned employee’s actual hourly rate of $31.33 and billing the $25.00 statutory cap, payment demanded in advance, Oct. 6, 2026.
- Northampton Public Schools, fee estimate of $950.00 for 40 estimated hours less two statutory free hours, with a 10-page attachment, Oct. 6, 2026.
- Newburyport Public Schools, fee estimate of $68.70 for 2.75 hours to redact 11 agreements, stated in the district’s letter as “2.75 x 25 = 68.70,” Oct. 6, 2026.
- Champa v. Weston Public Schools, 473 Mass. 86 (2015).
- SPR17/661, Alexander v. Wellesley Public Schools (Supervisor’s determination rejecting the narrow reading of Champa).
- SPR26/4069 (East Bridgewater), SPR26/4044 (Natick), SPR26/4087 (Quincy), determinations capping attorney-review fees at $75.00 per hour.
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