The Supervisor of Records held that Westwood may charge $25 an hour and may bill its first two hours — but ordered the School to revise its twelve-hour estimate or show why ten hours of assumed redaction, priced without a single page count, are consistent with the law, and to answer the records request within ten business days.
On October 14, 2026, the Supervisor of Records issued her determination in SPR26/4078, the appeal of Westwood Public Schools’ fee estimate for a records request about how the District settles student disputes. The School may keep its rate. It may not keep its silence about the workload. The determination orders the School to respond to the request within ten business days, in a manner consistent with the ruling, with a copy filed to the Public Records Division.
Every number quoted below is the District’s own, reprinted inside the determination from its September 29 and October 1 responses. Westwood’s status, fee figures, claimed hours and docket stay on the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project tracker as they change.
The request, the $520, and the $300
Parent Data Force sent the request on September 23, 2026: electronic copies of every final or executed student-related agreement — settlements, resolution agreements, MOUs and MOAs, mediation agreements, stipulations and consent agreements, side letters, and material amendments — for the window September 18, 2021 through the date of the District’s response.
The School answered on September 29 with a bill instead of records: 13 hours at $40 an hour, $520, the request placed on hold pending payment — while the District’s own September 23 acknowledgment had capped the rate at $25. We appealed under G.L. c. 66, § 10A the same day, and the appeal was docketed as SPR26/4078. That first fight is on file here.
On October 1, after the appeal opened, the School reissued the estimate: 12 hours at $25 an hour, $300. The rate concession was real. The workload claim was not. Its breakdown: 1 hour for an administrative assistant to locate and retrieve around 60 responsive records; 10 hours for the special education finance and contracts manager to redact them, “based upon sixty (60) responsive records to the request, with an average of ten (10) minutes of time required to redact each record”; and 1 hour for “reproduction of materials; scanning and electronic preparation for submission.” The District stated there is no existing list or index responsive to the request and did not grant the public-interest fee waiver.
What we objected to
The revised estimate still rested entirely on an assumption: ten minutes per record, multiplied by sixty records nobody had counted by page. Our objection, summarized in the determination, was that the 10-hour redaction figure is based on a uniform assumption rather than an identified workload; that Watertown — our closest comparator — produced essentially the same number of responsive agreements without assessing a fee; that previously reviewed records should not be priced from scratch; that the estimate never established why every one of the sixty records requires fresh redaction; that the scanning-and-preparation hour had no factual basis when the request sought electronic production; and that the public-interest waiver request deserved a real answer.
What held, and what did not
Three things survived, and the determination says so plainly.
The rate holds. Because no employee capable of the work is paid less than $25 an hour, charging $25 — the statutory municipal ceiling — is proper. The $40 figure from September is gone; the School priced its own concession into the October estimate.
The first two hours are billable here. The law gives municipalities of more than 20,000 people two free hours of search, review and redaction. Westwood is a municipality of 16,266, so it may charge from the first hour. That fact, which reads like a loophole, is the reason the hour count matters more, not less: every one of the twelve hours is on the tab.
What did not hold is the arithmetic’s skeleton. The Supervisor found that “the School has not provided sufficient explanation of why this amount of employee time is necessary.” On the ten redaction hours she ordered specifics: the District “must clarify how many pages of responsive records it possesses, and how many minutes per page it will take to redact the responsive records.” Ten minutes per record is a guess that travels in a boxcar; minutes per page is a workload. On the one hour of reproduction and scanning she asked the District to explain the tasks involved and how the statute permits charging for them at all, when the request sought electronic delivery.
The determination’s quietest sentence is the one that says the District “does not have any records responsive to the request for an existing list or index.” That is not a defense — it is an admission that nobody knows yet how many pages exist. An estimate that cannot state its own denominator is a number, not a fee.
What the order requires
Within ten business days the School must provide a response to the request consistent with the determination — a revised estimate or a factually supported explanation of the $300 — and send a copy to the Public Records Division. The Supervisor noted we may still narrow the request further, and that any revision “would result in the requirement to issue a revised fee estimate.” The substantive response remains appealable within ninety days.
Westwood’s row on the tracker still reads Appeal filed. No records have arrived and no fee has been paid, and the file on this matter — request, response, appeal as filed — is on the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project tracker.
This is the same spine the Supervisor applied to Weymouth the day before, when two thirds of a $350 estimate came off for redaction hours billed without the petition the law requires — covered in Weymouth’s $350 Estimate Ordered Revised — and to Dracut on October 9. The districts are different; the defect is identical: hours without a testable workload. Westwood is one of 32 districts in this project that have stated a fee, and their estimates now total $44,466.20 across more than a thousand claimed hours. Every hour that cannot name its pages is a bill one parent somewhere will be told to pay.
What This Means for Parents
- A rate cut does not settle an estimate. Westwood dropped from $40 an hour to $25 and from $520 to $300, and the Supervisor still found the bill unsupported. When a district “concedes” the rate, the fight that remains is the hours — ask what each hour contains.
- Hours must travel with a denominator. The determination says it in one clause: how many pages exist, and how many minutes per page. If your district hands you “X hours for review,” the answer in writing is: per what, counted how?
- Small towns may bill the first two hours. The two free hours belong to municipalities over 20,000 people. Westwood has 16,266, so everything is chargeable there. Know which bracket your town is in before you negotiate an estimate.
- “We have no list or index yet” is a workload admission. A district that cannot say how many pages it holds cannot say what reviewing them costs. That sentence helped win this order, and it is available in any fee exchange.
- The tracker carries the whole file. Westwood’s request, its two estimates and the appeal as filed sit 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.
Sources
- Supervisor of Records, determination SPR26/4078, Oct. 14, 2026 — appeal of Westwood Public Schools’ fee estimate granted in part; the School ordered to revise the estimate or explain its consistency with G.L. c. 66, § 10(d) and to respond within ten business days, copy to the Public Records Division; $25 rate and the first-two-hours charge for a municipality under 20,000 held lawful.
- Westwood Public Schools, Sept. 29, 2026 fee estimate — 13 hours at $40 per hour, $520, request on hold pending payment — and Oct. 1, 2026 revised estimate — 12 hours at $25 per hour, $300, approximately 60 responsive records, 10 redaction hours assumed at 10 minutes per record, 1 hour reproduction and electronic preparation, no responsive list or index, fee waiver not granted; both reprinted in the determination.
- Parent Data Force, public records request of Sept. 23, 2026; petition of appeal of Sept. 29, 2026, and objections to the revised estimate of Oct. 1, 2026, summarized in the determination.
- Tracker row for Westwood Public Schools — status Appeal filed, docket SPR26/4078, superseded estimate $520, current estimate $300 at 12 claimed hours — on the Massachusetts Student Settlement Records Project.
- Related coverage: Parent Data Force’s Sept. 29 appeal reporting on the $520 estimate, and the Oct. 13 Weymouth determination applying the same workload requirement.
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