Pentucket Itemizes a $150 Estimate, Down to the Half-Hour

Two hours to search and compile, four to review and redact, all at the statutory $25 rate — the third fee estimate in the project, and a model of what an itemized bill looks like.

In a week when the same one-page request drew $75 in Berlin-Boylston, $750 in Amesbury and $2,950 in Dracut, Pentucket Regional School District answered with the only response of the day that behaves like a receipt: an estimate arrived September 25, 2026, over the name of Alyson Tedeschi, itemizing 2.0 hours of search and compilation ($50) plus 4.0 hours of review and redaction ($100), all at the statutory $25 an hour — $150 total, with production anticipated within ten business days of payment. No acknowledgment letter came ahead of it, no invoice came with it. Just the arithmetic, to the half-hour, in a plain email. It is the middle child of the fee board: three and a half times the cheapest estimate, one-tenth the largest.

The Numbers First

• $150. Pentucket’s total estimate — the third fee estimate of the project, and the second-cheapest of the four priced so far.
• 6.0 hours, split 2.0 for search and compilation, 4.0 for review and redaction — the only estimate of the week expressed in half-hour precision, and the only one requiring a calculator to check: 6.0 × $25 = $150.
• $25 an hour, the statutory rate. Like every other district that has priced the request, Pentucket’s letter is an argument about hours. Unlike its neighbors, it shows the division.
• 4.0 hours for review and redaction alone — twice Berlin-Boylston’s entire redaction allowance for the same request, and a sixth of Dracut’s all-in 120.
• 2 days from the September 23 request to the September 25 estimate — with no acknowledgment in between. The initial response due date on the tracker is October 7; Pentucket beat it by twelve days.
• 10 business days after payment: the production window. Records move once the $150 moves.
• $0 is what the only producing district charged for the same request: Tantasqua’s 45 pages, published free, versus Pentucket’s price of admission to look.

What Pentucket Said

No letterhead theater, no scope objection, no invoice riding shotgun — the Pentucket response is a receipt-shaped email from Alyson Tedeschi: 2.0 hours to search for and compile responsive records, 4.0 hours to review and redact them, $25 an hour to run the math, $150 at the bottom, and a clock that starts counting ten business days when the payment clears. Pentucket has no fee-estimate PDF on the project shelf — the estimate came by plain email, text only — so there is no envelope to photograph; the numbers above are quoted from the email itself and logged on the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project.

Two things make this letter matter more than its dollar figure. First, the precision: 2.0 and 4.0 are estimates written like measurements, with the same decimal-point care Berlin-Boylston’s itemizer used to break its three hours into tasks — the “legally required redactions” being where the real work lives, and both letters say so. Second, the missing courtesy: unlike Peabody, which acknowledged the request the day after it was sent, Pentucket skipped the acknowledgment and went straight to the bill; unlike Dracut, whose 120-hour, $2,950 estimate is ten-plus times Pentucket’s hours, Pentucket did not explain what the hours were for beyond the two tasks — search and redaction. Itemization is the difference between these documents, and the project’s whole method is to put the differences on one board next to Tantasqua’s free 45 pages.

How It Compares

The running total, cheapest to most expensive:

• Tantasqua Regional — $0, no fee at all: 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, payment before production: Pentucket itemizes $150.
• Peabody — $300, fourteen hours in aggregate with an invoice attached.
• Amesbury — $750, thirty hours at the statutory ceiling, under appeal to the Supervisor of Public Records.
• Dracut — $2,950, 120 hours for 45 agreements it refuses to open first.

Pentucket’s slot on that board is the argument in miniature. Same statutory rate as everyone — the five price-setting districts each bill $25 an hour, so the hourly rate carries no signal at all. The hours are the signal, and Pentucket’s are specific enough to audit: a requester who thinks 4.0 hours of redaction is generous can answer with arithmetic instead of argument. The board’s patterns hold around it: first-two-hours discounts appear at Dracut and Peabody but not here; itemized estimates cluster at the low end of the price board while bare totals sit at the top; and the only district that skipped estimating altogether — Tantasqua, $0, records actually produced — is the one everyone else is now being measured against.

The board itself, with every fee, hours claim and production logged as data: Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project, where the first records week is chronicled in the project’s running update.

What This Means for Parents

• An itemized estimate is auditable — ask for one. Pentucket showed the work: hours by task, rate, total. A bare “$300” invites argument; “2.0 + 4.0 × $25” can be checked, compared and appealed line by line.
• Half-hour precision sets a norm. If Berlin-Boylston’s three hours and Pentucket’s six can be stated to the task, a district’s refusal to itemize is a choice, not a necessity. Ask for the granularity you see here.
• Ten business days starts at payment. Pentucket’s clock begins after the $150 lands; Tantasqua’s two-day turnaround needed no payment at all. Note which district’s timeline depends on your wallet.
• No acknowledgment is its own data point. Pentucket’s estimate beat its October 7 deadline by twelve days without ever acknowledging the request. If your district skips the courtesy, the tracker now records that too.
• The price board is the leverage. The same request drew $0, $75, $150, $300, $750 and $2,950 in one week. Find your district’s column on the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project before you negotiate one of anything.

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Sources

• Pentucket Regional School District, itemized fee estimate by email from Alyson Tedeschi, September 25, 2026: 2.0 hours search/compilation, 4.0 hours review/redaction, $25/hr, $150 total; production anticipated within ten business days of payment. Text-email response; no PDF hosted.
• Parent Data Force, standardized public-records request to Pentucket Regional School District, sent September 23, 2026; logged on the project tracker (initial response due October 7, 2026).
• 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.