Somerset’s Fee-and-Time Petition Is Now SPR26/4099

Somerset’s records officer sent a fee estimate and the district’s own fee-and-time petition on September 30 — a $75-an-hour counsel rate, ten additional search hours on roughly a thousand responsive pages, and thirty extra business days. Parent Data Force opposed it the same morning, and the Supervisor of Records docketed it the same afternoon.

The Numbers First

• $75 an hour. The counsel rate Somerset’s petition seeks for review of final settlement agreements — the same rate Sharon proposed in the precedent the appeal cites, and four times the $25 an hour several districts on the board bill for identical work.
• ~1,000. The number Somerset’s letter alternates between calling responsive pages and responsive documents — the appeal asks for a corrected estimate that reconciles the two, because a page count and a document count are different facts.
• +10 search hours. Sought on top of the estimate, after the petition states Somerset has already identified approximately 1,000 responsive pages — the appeal asks what repositories and custodians actually remain.
• 30 business days. The maximum extension Somerset petitions for, against two districts that produced the same category of records in two days and six days.
• 0. The number Somerset’s combined letter does not state: a machine-readable fee total. The letter arrived scanned, with no text layer, so the project publishes the letter as received and the itemization facts above — no invented total.
• Same day, twice. The Supervisor’s office acknowledged the petition as SPR26/4099 on September 30, and Parent Data Force’s opposition and Section 10A appeal went up the same morning — 11:22 a.m.

What Somerset Said — and What the Appeal Asks

The letter is signed by Robin Vaccaro, Somerset’s records access officer, and it is dated September 23, 2026 — the same day the standardized request went out — but it reached Parent Data Force at 9:21 a.m. on September 30. It does two things at once: it estimates a fee, and it petitions the Supervisor of Public Records for relief from the request. The petition asks for a $75/hour rate for outside counsel, about ten additional hours of search time, and a thirty-business-day extension; it also bills review time against “the invoices sought in the request,” a phrase the appeal flags, because the request sought settlement agreements, not invoices.

The appeal’s first ground is rate. In Hohler v. Sharon Public Schools, SPR25/1092 (April 24, 2025), Sharon likewise asserted that counsel was necessary, sought $75 an hour, and estimated about a minute per page — and the Supervisor found Sharon had not shown why the work could not prudently be completed at a rate above $25 an hour. Somerset’s showing is not materially stronger. The second ground is time: G.L. c. 66, § 10(c) requires request-specific good cause, and Tantasqua produced the same form request in two days on September 25 while Pembroke produced on September 29 — comparators that do not settle Somerset’s volume but show the request category does not inherently require a maximum extension.

The relief asked of the Supervisor: deny the $75/hour rate; deny or materially limit the thirty-day extension; require a corrected, itemized estimate reconciling the pages-versus-documents discrepancy and explaining the ten search hours; require rolling production of what is already located; and find expressly that the request is noncommercial and serves the public interest, as § 10(d)(ix) and § 10(d)(iv)(1) require the Supervisor to weigh. The framework for student records — redact, don’t withhold — comes from Champa v. Weston Public Schools, 473 Mass. 86 (2015), and SPR17/661, Alexander v. Wellesley Public Schools. The full paper trail is public: the combined fee estimate and fee-and-time petition (PDF) and the opposition and appeal as filed (PDF). Somerset is copied as 950 C.M.R. 32.08(1)(g) requires, and the records request process in Somerset is now a pending matter at the Supervisor of Public Records.

How It Compares

The running board, cheapest to most expensive:

• Tantasqua Regional — $0: 45 pages produced, no fee, the project’s first production.
• Berlin-Boylston — $75, reduced to $50 after the district accepted a narrowed request on September 29.
• North Attleborough — $100: six hours, capped by the superintendent as a cooperative accommodation; a full public-interest waiver was requested September 29.
• Amherst-Pelham — $100: six estimated hours, four billable after the two-hour waiver, at $25 an hour.
• Pentucket — $150: six hours itemized to the half-hour.
• Natick — $275: about 300 pages, two search hours, three attorney-review hours, and a 30-day petition — appealed (SPR26/4044).
• Peabody — $300: fourteen hours, invoice with the letter.
• East Bridgewater — $350: about six documents, a two-rate estimate, and its own 30-day petition — appealed.
• Weymouth — $350: a portal fee with a twenty-day withdrawal clock — appealed (SPR26/4062).
• Quincy — $450: six search hours at $25 an hour plus four billable review hours at $75 — its own petition and the same-day opposition covered in the project update (SPR26/4087).
• Westwood — $520, 13 hours at $40 an hour after its own $25 cap: appealed (SPR26/4078).
• Amesbury — $750: thirty hours at the statutory ceiling — appealed September 23.
• Dracut — $2,950, 120 hours for 45 already-identified agreements: appealed (SPR26/4024).
• Somerset — no published total (the combined letter arrived scanned): a $75/hour counsel rate, ten more search hours, and a 30-day petition — opposed and appealed the same day (SPR26/4099).

One district produced records for nothing. Eleven priced the identical request from $50 to $2,950 — and Somerset, the twelfth, priced it in a scan. Seven of the priced estimates are now before the Supervisor of Public Records. The whole board — fees, hours, productions, appeals: Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project.

What This Means for Parents

• A petition is the district appealing itself. Somerset didn’t just estimate a fee — it asked the Supervisor for permission to charge more and take longer, which means the burden of justification sits with the district.
• The $75 rate has a losing precedent. Sharon asked for the same rate and the Supervisor said the district had not shown why $25 an hour was insufficient; Somerset gets the same question.
• A scanned letter has a cost. When the estimate arrives as an image with no text layer, no one — requester, Supervisor, or public — can copy the total into a docket. The facts that survive are the ones the district’s own petition states.
• Pages and documents are different claims. A letter that alternates between ~1,000 pages and ~1,000 documents is asking the Supervisor to price whichever number is bigger; the appeal asks the estimate to pick one and prove it.
• Same-day answers matter. The petition was acknowledged by the Supervisor’s office the afternoon it arrived, and the opposition went up that morning — the five-business-day determination window is now running against the petition, not the requester.

Sources

• Somerset Public Schools, combined fee estimate and fee-and-time petition, letter dated September 23, 2026, received September 30, 2026 (Records Access Officer Robin Vaccaro; scanned letter, no text layer, published as received; self-hosted PDF).
• Patrick Pierce, Senior Clerk, Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, Public Records Division, SPR26/4099 petition acknowledgment, September 30, 2026 (determination due within five business days of receipt).
• Parent Data Force, opposition to the Somerset fee-and-time petition and appeal under G.L. c. 66, § 10A(a), filed September 30, 2026, 11:22 a.m. (citing Hohler v. Sharon Public Schools, SPR25/1092, April 24, 2025; Champa v. Weston Public Schools, 473 Mass. 86 (2015); Alexander v. Wellesley Public Schools, SPR17/661; Tantasqua and Pembroke production comparators).
• Parent Data Force, standardized public-records request to Somerset Public Schools, sent September 23, 2026.
• G.L. c. 66, §§ 10, 10A; 950 C.M.R. 32.08(1).