The Supervisor of Records priced Wakefield’s attorney-review rate, priced Cambridge’s records-officer rate, upheld East Bridgewater’s $350 estimate, and closed Swansea’s fee appeal — all between October 14 and October 15. On the same day she told Westwood to count its pages, she found East Bridgewater’s estimate “sufficiently explained.” Parent Data Force asked her to reconcile the two. Separately, a limited appeal of Amherst-Pelham’s remaining $50 fee was rescinded the day it was sent.
Between October 13 and October 15, 2026, the Public Records Division issued seven determinations touching this project. Three were reported here as they landed — Weymouth’s $350 estimate ordered revised (SPR26/4062, Oct. 13), Shrewsbury’s five-day extension granted (SPR26/4207, Oct. 13), and Westwood’s $300 estimate ordered revised or explained (SPR26/4078, Oct. 14). The other four are new: Wakefield’s 30-day extension and $75-an-hour attorney-review rate (SPR26/4271), Cambridge’s rate capped at $54.73 an hour (SPR26/4214), East Bridgewater’s $350 estimate upheld (SPR26/4068), and Swansea’s fee appeal closed because the District answered again before the Supervisor could rule (SPR26/4382). One appeal in the batch was withdrawn by the requester within a minute of being filed.
That is a lot of arithmetic decided in three days, and one contradiction worth putting on the record. Every docket, fee figure and claimed hour below is carried on the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project tracker as it happens.
East Bridgewater: the estimate that did not have to be counted
East Bridgewater Public Schools assessed $350 on September 28, 2026 for the request we sent on September 18: five hours of search at $25 an hour, and three hours of review at $75 an hour. The District also filed a fee-and-time petition, which the Supervisor granted on October 5 in SPR26/4069 — a 30-business-day extension and permission to charge up to $75 an hour for attorney review.
On October 14, she ruled on our appeal of the estimate itself, SPR26/4068. The School had “sufficiently explained the amount of time it requires to locate, segregate, and redact the responsive records.” Because East Bridgewater’s population is 20,000 or fewer, every employee hour is chargeable, with no free-hours credit. And segregation and redaction under the attorney-client privilege, the determination holds, “is interpreted to be ‘required by law’” — which is the one category of redaction work a municipality may bill without a separate petition.
The appeal closed. The $350 stands.
Westwood: the estimate that had to be counted
The Westwood determination came out the same day, from the same office, on the same kind of question — a fee estimate for student settlement agreements, priced in hours, with no page count underneath it.
There, the Supervisor ordered the School to revise its $300 estimate or explain how it complies with the law, and she specified what the explanation must contain: how many pages of responsive records Westwood holds, how many minutes per page redaction will take, and what the one hour of scanning and electronic preparation actually covers. Westwood had told her its 10 redaction hours were based on “sixty (60) responsive records to the request, with an average of ten (10) minutes of time required to redact each record.” She wanted pages, not records, and minutes per page.
Two districts. One day. Two estimates built the same way — hours priced before anyone counted a page. One was ordered to count. One was found to have explained itself. The difference is not visible in either determination.
So we asked her to reconcile them
At 4:34 p.m. on October 14, Parent Data Force filed a request for reconsideration under SPR Bulletin 04-17, limited to the factual support for the $350 estimate and the adequacy of the September 28 initial response. It is a narrow request. It does not reopen the 30-business-day extension, and it does not revisit the $75-an-hour rate, which is the subject of a separate reconsideration still pending from October 5.
The filing lays the two determinations side by side and asks a single question: if Westwood must produce a page count and a minutes-per-page figure for sixty records, what distinguishes East Bridgewater’s six? The Division opened SPR26/4068 for reconsideration at 4:53 p.m. the same afternoon. A decision is due 15 business days from receipt.
Wakefield: $75 an hour, and thirty more days
Wakefield Public Schools answered our September 23 request for the first time on October 7 — a letter estimating 50 to 100 responsive documents, 40 hours of review at one minute per page, and $75 an hour for attorney review, for a total of $3,000. The District filed a contemporaneous petition asking the Supervisor to bless both the higher rate and an additional 30 business days.
On October 14, in SPR26/4271, she granted both: good cause for a 30-business-day extension, and a fee “limited to $75.00 per hour for attorney review.” The District’s petition made a point worth noting — it was not asking for permission to charge for redactions at all, on the theory that the redactions are required by law and therefore billable without a petition. What it wanted priced was the attorney time.
What the determination does not do is audit the $3,000. The rate and the extension are decided; the hours are not. Our opposition noted that the total never accounts for the two free hours that apply to a municipality over 20,000 people — 38 billable hours at $75 is $2,850 — discloses no page count behind the 40 hours, and recites a duty to review “each page of the invoices sought in the request,” invoices this request never asked for. Those objections now sit on a row whose docket reads SPR26/4271 and SPR26/4277.
Cambridge: $54.73 an hour, and twenty-five more days
Cambridge came in the same day with a different number and a different structure. The City asked to charge above $25 an hour for both the School Department and the Law Department, and cited a search returning 21 GB of material — about 185,000 items — for a request about final executed student agreements. Our October 6 appeal, docketed SPR26/4251, objected to that universe as disproportionate to what the request seeks.
The October 14 determination, SPR26/4214, found the request was not made for a commercial purpose, and then found the City had met its burden anyway: given the nature of the responsive records, the request could not prudently be completed without a fee above $25 an hour. The City may assess a fee limited to $54.73 per hour — the rate of its lower-paid records officer, the Assistant Public Records Access Officer — and is granted a 25-business-day extension to produce, running from the date the City receives payment.
Swansea: an appeal closed because the district kept talking
Swansea’s fee appeal was docketed SPR26/4382 on October 14 and assigned to Staff Attorney Barbara Durgin. The next day, Superintendent Scott Holcomb filed a supplemental explanation with the Division and copied Parent Data Force — a candid document. The revised $325 estimate, he wrote, “represents 13 anticipated employee hours, rather than work already completed or a determination of the final charge.” It was reached by reconsidering the original task allocations against the narrower period, not from “a completed inventory or page-by-page review.” The prior Boston Globe production cutoff remains unconfirmed. The District does not assert that whole agreements are exempt merely because they concern students, would not charge duplicate time or for discretionary redactions without approval, and would limit any final assessment to actual, reasonable, legally permissible costs.
The Supervisor’s determination issued the same day and closed the appeal, because the School had provided a further response. The order says nothing about the substance of the $325 — and it flags the road left open: the substance of that October 15 response may be appealed within 90 days.
So Swansea now has a docket number, a district statement conceding that its estimate is anticipatory, and a closed appeal that decided none of the objections filed with it.
The appeal that was rescinded twice
Not every filing belongs in the record. On October 14 at 4:25 p.m., a limited appeal of Amherst-Pelham Regional Public Schools’ remaining $50 fee went to the Division. One minute later it was followed by a message saying to disregard it entirely: an old draft, rescinded. The Division’s staff attorney asked, reasonably, for the underlying request and response as PDFs rather than pasted text. On October 15, the reply was a second withdrawal: “I want to withdraw this it was sent by accident.”
No docket number was ever assigned. Amherst-Pelham’s row stays a fee estimate, and its $50 stands exactly where it was — a reminder that the tracker records what actually happened, including the filings that did not.
Two dockets acknowledged, both out of scope
The Division also acknowledged two new appeals in this window: SPR26/4436, concerning Dighton-Rehoboth Regional School District, and SPR26/4424, concerning Middleborough Public Schools. Both arise from hiring and personnel records — applicant pools, search records, a principal recruitment — not from student settlement agreements. They are not part of this project, they are not on the tracker, and they should not be counted in it. A docket number is not evidence that a matter belongs here; the underlying request is.
What four new determinations bought
The four new rulings produced $75 an hour for attorney review in Wakefield, $54.73 for a records officer’s own time in Cambridge, an upheld estimate in East Bridgewater, and a closed appeal in Swansea that decided none of the objections filed with it. Every one of those outcomes turns on the same two facts: what the records are, and who is qualified to review them. None of them turns on how many pages exist — because in three of the four, nobody has said.
That is the pattern this project exists to document. Not that districts charge, but that they price work before measuring it, and that the measurement only appears when someone asks for it in writing.
What this means if your district is on the list
- The rate is decided; the hours are not. A determination approving $75 an hour is not a determination that the hours billed are right. Wakefield’s $3,000 is still 40 uncounted hours.
- Population decides whether the first two hours are free. Municipalities over 20,000 may not charge for the first two hours of employee time; municipalities of 20,000 or fewer may. East Bridgewater and Westwood both fall in the chargeable bracket — and both were told so explicitly.
- “Sixty records” is not “sixty pages.” The Westwood order turns on that distinction. If your district quotes records, ask for pages and minutes per page.
- Redaction work needs a petition, unless the law requires it. Attorney-client privilege redactions are treated as required by law; discretionary redactions are not chargeable without the Supervisor’s approval.
- A closed appeal is not always a decided one. Swansea’s appeal closed on a further response, with 90 days left to challenge the substance. Read what a determination actually decides before treating it as a loss.
- The tracker carries the whole file. Every docket, fee figure, claimed hour and production history sits on the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project tracker. If your district is not on it, write to the project and it becomes another row on the board. The queue moved again this week: six more interest votes landed, and Billerica was asked for a fourth time.
Sources
- Supervisor of Records, determination SPR26/4068, Oct. 14, 2026 — appeal of East Bridgewater Public Schools’ Sept. 28, 2026 fee estimate; $350 found sufficiently explained (5 hours search at $25, 3 hours review at $75); municipality of 20,000 or fewer, all employee time chargeable; segregation and redaction under the attorney-client privilege treated as required by law; appeal closed.
- Parent Data Force, request for reconsideration of SPR26/4068 filed Oct. 14, 2026 under SPR Bulletin 04-17, limited to the factual support for the $350 estimate and the adequacy of the Sept. 28 initial response; opened by the Division the same day, decision due 15 business days from receipt.
- Supervisor of Records, determination SPR26/4078, Oct. 14, 2026 — Westwood Public Schools ordered to revise its $300 estimate or explain its consistency with G.L. c. 66, § 10(d), including a page count and a minutes-per-page figure for the 60-record redaction assumption, and the basis for the one-hour scanning and preparation charge.
- Supervisor of Records, determination SPR26/4271, Oct. 14, 2026 — petition of Wakefield Public Schools; 30-business-day extension granted; fee limited to $75.00 per hour for attorney review; District’s petition stated it was not seeking authorization to charge for legally required redactions.
- Supervisor of Records, determination SPR26/4214, Oct. 14, 2026 — petition of the City of Cambridge; request found not commercial, fee above $25 an hour found necessary, fee limited to $54.73 per hour (Assistant Public Records Access Officer rate); 25-business-day extension granted.
- Supervisor of Records, determination SPR26/4382, Oct. 15, 2026 — appeal of Swansea Public Schools closed on the School’s further Oct. 15, 2026 response; substance of that response appealable within 90 days.
- Swansea Public Schools, supplemental explanation filed with the Public Records Division Oct. 15, 2026 — revised $325 estimate represents 13 anticipated hours rather than completed work; not based on a completed inventory or page-by-page review; Boston Globe production cutoff unconfirmed; no duplicate or unapproved discretionary charges; no full waiver granted.
- Appeal acknowledgments SPR26/4436 (Dighton-Rehoboth Regional School District) and SPR26/4424 (Middleborough Public Schools), Oct. 15, 2026 — both arising from hiring and personnel records, outside the scope of this project.
- Reader queue, Oct. 13–15, 2026 — six interest votes recorded (Stoneham, Douglas, Newton, Mendon-Upton, Wellesley, Dracut); Billerica Public Schools requested a fourth time; queue total 50 districts.
- The Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project tracker — status, fee figure, claimed hours, docket number and production history for every district.
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