The tracker now covers 36 Massachusetts school districts with 9 acknowledgments — the newest from Lexington, where the Records Access Officer confirmed receipt and signaled a fee estimate may follow.
For a project that runs on mail, one letter is the whole story. Last week Lexington Public Schools showed as awaiting on this tracker because the request bounced off a mailbox that was one letter too short. Then somebody on the other end fixed what I could not see: the district’s real records inbox is recordsrequests@lexingtonma.org, plural, not singular. The re-sent request found a human being. On the morning of September 22 the door opened.
The Acknowledgment
Julie Kaye, the Records Access Officer for Lexington Public Schools, wrote:
> “We have received the forwarded request and will process it accordingly. Once a fee estimate has been prepared, I will share it with you.”
Read it twice, because two sentences carry two facts. First: a named RAO at a district of 30,000-plus residents has confirmed, in writing, that the request arrived and is being processed. That moves Lexington from awaiting to acknowledged — the ninth district out of 36 to do so. Second: the phrase “fee estimate” is doing real legal work.
What a Fee Estimate Means
Under the Massachusetts public records law — G.L. c. 66, § 10 — a municipality may charge for the time it takes to search for and segregate public records, but it must tell you the estimated cost before it bills you, and a fee estimate is not a bill. It is the district telling you, on paper, how much your own records will cost you. Requesters can ask for a fee waiver, and if the estimate looks inflated or the records never arrive, the next stop is an appeal to the Supervisor of Public Records under § 10A. So when an RAO volunteers a fee estimate in the same breath as the acknowledgment, that is not a brush-off. That is a district saying: we have your request, we know what it costs to answer it, and we are willing to put a number on it. Whether the number is fair is the next fight, and I will be watching for it.
The One-Letter Backstory
For the record, because the tracker discloses everything: the original send to Lexington bounced on recordsrequest@ — singular — an address that does not exist. The correction to the plural inbox is the kind of boring, human-scale logistics that decides whether a public records request lives or dies. The tracker’s note on the Lexington row records the miss and the fix in plain words, because honest bookkeeping is the whole project.
The Clock Keeps Running
Lexington was one of five newest requests submitted September 21, with an expected initial response by October 5. The other 31 districts from wave one carry an expected date of October 2. Under the statute, ten business days is the window for an initial response; the dates are milestones, not promises, and a missed date is not a violation — but it is a signal, and the appeal path exists for exactly that moment. Every district that has not acknowledged by then gets the same treatment as every other: named, dated, and linked from the project page.
So the board reads: 36 districts requested, 9 acknowledged, 0 productions posted. Acknowledged is not finished. Lexington’s fee estimate, and the 27 districts still silent, are the next measures.
If your district is not on the board, ask for your district to be added. If it is, watch it with me — the full tracker is here, updated as the mail comes in.
What This Means for Parents
- The tracker is live and public: all 36 districts, statuses, and dated notes are on the project page.
- Want your district added to the next wave? Ask for your district to be added.
- The project page includes a DIY template so you can file your own public records request with your district’s RAO.
- Acknowledged is not finished: Lexington’s fee estimate and any actual production of settlement records are the next measures to watch.
- Delivery failures are disclosed and fixed on the tracker — including Lexington’s one-letter address bounce, now corrected to a working channel.
Sources
- Email from Julie Kaye, Records Access Officer, Lexington Public Schools, Sept. 22, 2026
- Delivery status notifications, Sept. 21, 2026
- G.L. c. 66, § 10 and 950 C.M.R. 32.00
- Champa v. Weston Public Schools, 473 Mass. 86 (2015); SPR17/661 Alexander v. Wellesley (2017)