Same Records Request, Ten Times the Price

On September 23, 2026, two Massachusetts school districts sent the first substantive responses of the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project, and for the same standardized request their fee estimates differed by a factor of ten: $75 in Berlin-Boylston, $750 in Amesbury.

The Numbers First

• 65 Massachusetts school districts received the same standardized public-records request in mid-September 2026.
• 17 districts have acknowledged receipt so far.
• 42 districts have not responded at all.
• 4 requests were routed to online records portals or re-sent after the first mailbox failed.
• 2 districts have returned a substantive response with a fee estimate — the first two of the entire project.
• $75 is the Berlin-Boylston Regional School District estimate: about three hours of staff work at $25 an hour, itemized line by line.
• $750 is the Amesbury Public Schools estimate: thirty hours of employee time at the same $25 hourly rate.
• 10x is the relative difference between the two estimates — same request, same hourly rate, same week.
• 1 appeal has been filed with the Massachusetts Supervisor of Public Records over the Amesbury response.
• 0 settlement records have been produced so far, by anyone.

Hold those two numbers in your head at the same time: $75 and $750. They are not an indictment and they are not an acquittal. They are the first two data points from a statewide experiment that has been running for about a week, and the experiment has already started paying out in a currency nobody budgeted for — the price, district by district, of asking a Massachusetts school district to show its paperwork.

What the Project Is, Briefly

Every district in the tracker has received substantially the same letter. It asks for electronic copies of all final or executed student-related agreements — settlement and release agreements, resolution agreements, memoranda of understanding, memoranda of agreement, mediation agreements, stipulations, side letters, and amendments — that resolve, compromise, or otherwise dispose of a student-related dispute from September 18, 2021 through the date of the district’s response. Special-education matters are named explicitly: IDEA and G.L. c. 71B, BSEA matters, Section 504, evaluations, placements, services, tuition, transportation, compensatory education. General-education disputes resolved in writing count too.

The standardized request matters for one reason: comparison. Sixty-five districts received the same question, covering the same records, over the same five-year window. When the answers come back, the differences between them are not accidents of phrasing — they are measurements. The full request template, every district’s status, and every response log live on the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project page.

Until this week, the project’s ledger was all silence: acknowledgments, portal routings, auto-replies. On September 23, the ledger got its first two entries with actual numbers in them, and the numbers do not match.

Berlin-Boylston: $75, Three Hours, and an Itemized Letter

Parent Data Force sent the Berlin-Boylston Regional School District its request on September 19, 2026, and the district acknowledged receipt the same day. Four days later — September 23 at 2:34 p.m. — the substantive response arrived from the Superintendent’s office, signed by Jennifer Fortune, Executive Assistant to the Superintendent. It was only the second substantive response in the project’s history, and it is a compact master class in what a fee-estimate letter is supposed to look like. The operative paragraph, verbatim:

“The District estimates that responding to your request will require approximately three (3) hours of staff time, consisting of one hour to search for and compile responsive records and two hours to review and complete legally required redactions. At an hourly rate of $25.00, the total estimated fee is $75.00.”

Count what that letter does in three sentences. It describes the work — searching files, reviewing records, redacting confidential information. It itemizes the hours — one to search and compile, two to review and redact. It states the rate, $25.00 an hour, and the letter explains why that rate: it is the rate of the lowest-paid employee capable of performing the work, subject to the applicable statutory limit. It performs the arithmetic in public and lands on a total: $75.00. It calls the estimate a good-faith assessment. And it hands the requester a genuine choice: pay and proceed, or narrow the request — particular search terms, subject matters, record types, date ranges — to bring the cost down. The letter also commits to a date: if the fee is paid, the records arrive by October 13, 2026.

Parent Data Force did not mail a check, and it did not file an appeal either. The same day the estimate arrived, the project sent the district a waiver request, invoking the public-interest fee waiver in the Massachusetts Public Records Law, G.L. c. 66, § 10(b)(viii), and laying out the case in plain terms: the request is noncommercial, it is part of a statewide transparency project, and whatever the district produces will be reviewed, organized, and published where anyone can read it — parents, advocates, researchers, journalists, policymakers — to improve public understanding of how school districts resolve student disputes and spend public money. The waiver letter also does something less common in public-records correspondence: it says thank you. It records, on the record, that Berlin-Boylston’s response was prompt, clear, itemized, and comparatively modest — and asks the district to finish the job by waiving the fee.

That is the second thing the district did right, and it may matter more than the first. A district that answers in four days, itemizes its hours, bills at its cheapest capable employee’s rate, and offers the requester a real narrowing option has done the public-records version of cleaning the kitchen before the inspection. The fee dispute, if one ever comes, starts from a document both sides can read.

As of publication, the waiver request is pending. Whatever the district decides, the handling is now part of the record, and the project intends to keep writing down the districts that handle these requests well right next to the ones that stall, bill, and bounce.

Amesbury: $750, Thirty Hours, and an Appeal

Amesbury Public Schools received the same standardized request on September 21, 2026, and answered it on September 23. The response runs six pages. Where Berlin-Boylston’s letter itemizes three hours, Amesbury’s letter builds a case for thirty — allocated on average, the district writes, to approximately 60 percent search time, 20 percent compilation time, and 20 percent reproduction time — with every employee hour billed at the $25 statutory maximum, because the central-office staff who would actually perform the work are compensated at rates exceeding $25.00 per hour. The two operative sentences, verbatim:

“As such, we estimate it will take a total of 30 hours of employee time to complete the District’s search for, compilation, and reproduction of all requested records. The total fee estimate for this work is $750 (30 hours x $25/hour).”

The letter then offers the same fork Berlin-Boylston offered, at ten times the altitude. Pay the $750, and the search begins: a check made out to the district, the amount noted as relating to the records request, and then the district proceeds “with the District’s search for, compilation, review, segregation, redaction, and reproduction of responsive records.” Or narrow the request — particular and/or modified search terms, subject matters, types of records, specific dates or narrowed time frames — and the district may be able to complete the process more efficiently and reduce the corresponding fees. Until payment arrives, nothing moves.

Parent Data Force did not send a check. The same day the response arrived, the project appealed it to the Massachusetts Supervisor of Public Records. The appeal challenges, among other things, the fee estimate and its itemization, the district’s objection to the request’s scope, the production timeframe, charges for electronic copies, and the district’s handling of the fee-waiver request. The appeal is pending with the Supervisor of Records as of publication — no docket number has been issued yet.

The Two Estimates, Side by Side

• The request: substantially identical standardized language, the same records, the same September 18, 2021-to-present window, sent to both districts within days of each other.
• Berlin-Boylston: fee estimate $75. Estimated labor 3 hours at $25.00/hour — 1 hour search and compile, 2 hours review and redaction. Rate set by the lowest-paid employee capable of the work. Records promised by October 13 upon payment. Next step: public-interest fee waiver requested.
• Amesbury: fee estimate $750. Estimated labor 30 hours at $25.00/hour — approximately 60 percent search, 20 percent compilation, 20 percent reproduction. Statutory maximum rate. Work begins only after payment. Next step: appeal filed with the Supervisor of Public Records.
• Relative difference: 10x.
• Same hourly rate. Same statutory cap. Same request. Ten times the estimated labor.

Why the Difference May — and May Not — Mean Anything

And now the paragraph that keeps this article honest, because the cheap move here is to crown Berlin-Boylston a hero and pelt Amesbury with produce, and the data does not support either gesture.

The contrast is the finding. Ten times the price for the same standardized request is a real, documented, sortable fact, and it now sits in the tracker next to the two letters that produced it. But the contrast does not establish why the estimates differ, and it does not prove either estimate right or wrong. Districts may vary — legitimately — in size, in the number of responsive records they hold, in the search systems and repositories they use, in staffing, in how much of their archive needs redaction before disclosure, and in a dozen other facts neither letter reveals. A district with a modern records system and a thin settlement file can price the same request at three hours in good faith. A district expecting to sweep a large volume of potentially responsive records can, in equally good faith, arrive at thirty. Both letters read as good-faith documents. Neither estimate has been audited, and this article does not crown either one.

What the difference proves is narrower and, honestly, more interesting: the cost of public-records access in Massachusetts school districts varies wildly, and until somebody asked the same question everywhere, nobody was measuring it. Now somebody is.

What the Project Tracks Going Forward

The settlement records themselves — once any district actually produces them — will be dataset one: what Massachusetts school districts agreed to when students’ disputes ended. The administrative responses are quietly becoming dataset two, and this article is its first entry: how each district administers the same request. The fee estimate and whether it is itemized. The hourly rate and which employee’s rate it uses. Whether payment comes before work. Whether the district offers a scope-down option. Whether a fee waiver is granted, ignored, or fought. Whether the request is answered by a person or processed by a portal, and what the portal’s confirmation number is. How long the first response takes, and what the Supervisor of Public Records does when an appeal arrives.

Both of this week’s data points are still moving. Berlin-Boylston owes the project a waiver decision, and Amesbury’s appeal is sitting at the Supervisor of Records without a docket number. When either moves, the tracker moves, and the project page gets the update with it.

How to Use This Yourself

Everything described here is public and replicable. The full request template — placeholders included, the exact text sent to all sixty-five districts — is on the project page, free to send to any district in Massachusetts. If you send it, tell the project what happened — drop the project a line — and your request becomes another row on the tracker. Rows are how the map gets finished.

What This Means for Parents

• The price of asking varies by a factor of ten. The same standardized request drew a $75 estimate from one district and a $750 estimate from another. Before you request records from a district, check the tracker — another parent may have already priced your district’s response for you.
• Itemization is the law’s tool, and it works. Berlin-Boylston’s itemized estimate — hours, tasks, rate, lowest-paid-capable-employee basis — is what a defensible fee looks like. If a district’s estimate arrives as a bare number, you can ask for the itemization behind it.
• Fee waivers exist, and districts can say yes. Massachusetts law provides a public-interest fee waiver for noncommercial requests that serve the public. Parent Data Force has asked Berlin-Boylston to waive its $75; the request is pending, and the outcome will be published on the tracker either way.
• Appeals go somewhere real. An unsatisfactory fee estimate is not a dead end: it can be appealed to the Massachusetts Supervisor of Public Records, which is exactly what happened with Amesbury’s $750 response on September 23. The appeal is pending as of publication.
• The tracker is the shortcut. Sixty-five districts have now been asked the same question; 17 have answered with receipts, 2 with substantive responses, and every reply is logged publicly. Following the project page means you inherit what has already been asked, answered, appealed, and paid for.

Sources

• Berlin-Boylston Regional School District, district response with fee estimate, received September 23, 2026, signed by Jennifer Fortune, Executive Assistant to the Superintendent; fee paragraph quoted verbatim in this article. Self-hosted PDF linked from the project tracker.
• Amesbury Public Schools, district response letter, September 23, 2026, estimating thirty hours of employee time and a total fee of $750 (30 hours x $25/hour). Self-hosted PDF linked from the project tracker.
• Parent Data Force, public-interest fee-waiver request to Berlin-Boylston Regional School District, sent September 23, 2026; waiver pending as of publication.
• Parent Data Force, appeal to the Massachusetts Supervisor of Public Records concerning the Amesbury response, filed September 23, 2026; appeal pending, no docket number as of publication.
• Massachusetts Public Records Law, G.L. c. 66, § 10, including § 10(b)(viii) (public-interest fee waiver) and § 10(d) (fee administration); 950 C.M.R. 32.00.
• Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project tracker, current as of September 24, 2026: 65 districts, 17 acknowledged, 42 awaiting first response, 4 routed or re-sent, 1 fee-estimate response, 1 appeal filed, 0 productions.