Kyle York v. Lexington, Town of - Public Schools (SPR 20253019)

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts William Francis Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth Public Records Division Manza Arthur Supervisor of Records October 24, 2025 SPR25/3019 Christine Lyons, M.Ed., PhD Records Access Officer Lexington Public Schools 146 Maple Street Lexington, MA 02420 Dear Dr. Lyons: I have received the petition of Kyle York appealing the response of the Lexington Public Schools (School) to four (4) requests for public records. See G. L. c. 66, § 10A; see also 950 C.M.R. 32.08(1). On August 22, 2025, in four separate requests, Mr. York requested: Request 1 ...the payment detail (just a report, not invoices) for a five year period for Illustrative Math and their publisher (which I believe is Kendall Hunt Publishing), separated by year. Request 2 …emails to and from [an identified individual] beginning in January 2025 through September 1, 2025. Request 3 …the invoice for po 220814 in 2022 to [an identified individual] for $530.44. Request 4 …the documentation associated with the ongoing literacy curriculum review including any emails, invoices, contracts, reports, or other misc documentation. One Ashburton Place, Room 1719, Boston, Massachusetts 02108 • (617) 727-2832 • Fax: (617) 727-5914 sec.state.ma.us/pre • pre@sec.state.ma.us

Christine Lyons, M.Ed., PhD SPR25/3019 Page 2 October 24, 2025 The School responded on August 29, 2025 and September 16, 2025, providing a fee estimate. In an attempt to “streamline this request” on September 17, 2025, Mr. York modified Request 4 to seek the following: [1] An accounts payable report for the consultants involved in the curriculum review. [2] Any status reports or deliverables those consultants have provided to date. The School subsequently provided a further response on September 30, 2025. Unsatisfied with the School’s responses, Mr. York petitioned this office and this appeal, SPR25/3019, was opened as a result. Fee Estimates – Municipalities A municipality may assess a reasonable fee for the production of a public record except those records that are freely available for public inspection. G. L. c. 66, § 10(d). The fees must reflect the actual cost of complying with a particular request. Id. A maximum fee of five cents ($.05) per page may be assessed for a black and white single or double-sided photocopy of a public record. G. L. c. 66, § 10(d)(i). Municipalities may not assess a fee for the first 2 (two) hours of employee time to search for, compile, segregate, redact or reproduce the record or records requested unless the municipality has 20,000 people or less. G. L. c. 66, § 10(d)(iii). Where appropriate, municipalities may include as part of the fee an hourly rate equal to or less than the hourly rate attributed to the lowest paid employee who has the necessary skill required to search for, compile, segregate, redact or reproduce a record requested, but the fee shall not be more than $25 per hour. Id. However, municipalities may charge more than $25 per hour if such rate is approved by the Supervisor of Records under a petition under G. L. c. 66, § 10(d)(iv). A fee shall not be assessed for time spent segregating or redacting records unless such segregation or redaction is required by law or approved by the Supervisor of Records under a petition under G. L. c. 66, § 10(d)(iv). See G. L. c. 66, § 10(d)(iii); 950 C.M.R. 32.06(4). The School’s August 29th, September 16th, and September 30th Responses On August 29, 2025, the School provided a responsive record to Request 3. In its September 16, 2025 response the School assessed a fee of $2198.75 to provide the remaining records responsive to Requests 1, 2, and 4. Regarding Request 4, the School also stated: …due to the volume of records requested and other daily obligations of our school personnel, we require additional time, up to 25 business days from our receipt of your request pursuant to M.G.L. c.66, §10(b)(vi), to produce these records to you… a follow-up response will be provided by September 26 assuming the good faith fee estimate described below is remitted to LPS.

Christine Lyons, M.Ed., PhD SPR25/3019 Page 3 October 24, 2025 In support of the fee estimate, School stated as follows: Potential Exemptions: …[W]e anticipate many of the responsive records will contain and/or constitute student record information. Information about a particular student and information which identifies or could be used to identify a particular student is exempt from public disclosure pursuant to M.G.L. c.4, §7(26)(a)… with the relevant statutory authority being M.G.L. c.71, §§34D and 34E, as implemented through 603 CMR 23.07(4), and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), 20 U.S.C. §1232g. In addition, information that, in conjunction with the other information provided and other information that is or has been made available publicly, would result in a “grave risk of indirect identification” of the subject and would therefore result in the disclosure of protected information, is also exempt from disclosure… The email search results are also likely to include and/or constitute information about employees and/or personnel matters exempt from public disclosure under M.G.L. c.4, §7(26)(c)… In addition, the survey responses and email search results may also include additional private information exempt under the privacy exemption of M.G.L. c.4, §7(26)(c)... Any records for which the public interest does not outweigh the privacy interest must be redacted prior to production and/or withheld in their entirety. Further, personal email addresses and other contact information that may be contained in any potentially responsive records must be redacted as exempt pursuant to M.G.L. c.4, §7(26)(a)… and M.G.L. c.66, §10B and M.G.L. c.150E, §5A(d), which provides that a public employee’s home/personal addresses, email address, and telephone numbers and date of birth are not public records, as well as pursuant to M.G.L. c.4, §7(26)(c). This personal contact information may also be exempt pursuant to M.G.L. c.4, §7(26)(o) or (p), to the extent applicable. Finally, your request seeks email communications involving school administrators who are likely to have communicated with the District’s legal counsel. To the extent responsive records may include materials created by legal counsel and communicated to the District as its client or other information which is privileged as attorney-client communications and/or attorney work-product, such information would be protected from disclosure under M.G.L. c.4, §7(26)(a)… As such, these records must be segregated and redacted of any attorney-client privileged communications /or attorney work-product prior to production. Given the scope of your requests, we expect additional exempt information may be discovered during the course of review of the potentially responsive records, including without limitation executive session materials, investigatory materials, intellectual property, tests/assessments, and/or security information, and the

Christine Lyons, M.Ed., PhD SPR25/3019 Page 4 October 24, 2025 District reserves the right to assert any other applicable exemption as it deems appropriate during the course of its review and response. …[W]e anticipate effectively all of the segregation and redaction process will be for information that is covered by Exemption (a) and is required by law; however, to the extent there are any segregation/redactions not required by law, the District will not charge for the related segregation/redaction time. Summary of Permissible Fees …Lexington ha[s] a population of exceeding 20,000 and, as such, the District may charge a fee for all time involved in responding to your request after two hours. Please note that the District has already spent more than two (2) hours searching for and compiling records and providing you with this initial response as required by law… [T]he lowest paid employee of the District who could continue the search for, compilation, review, segregation, redaction and reproduction of records and make judgments as to which information is public and which information is exempt and must be redacted would be a member of the District’s central office staff, all of whom are compensated at rates exceeding $25.00 per hour. As such, any further time spent completing the response process will be charged at the maximum rate of $25.00 per hour. …[W]e estimate that it will take at least three (3) additional minutes per record to fully search for, compile, review, segregate, redact, and reproduce each record in accordance with applicable law. This has and/or will involve, without limitation saving the records already located to a single file, manually reviewing each record to determine whether it is, in fact, responsive, redacting any exempt information with the labeling and explanation required by law, and then saving this document to another file for production to you. Although this will be a fluid process and may vary for each particular record, it will essentially be broken down into a search/compilation step, a segregation/redaction step, and a reproduction step, because we would search/compile at the same time and segregate/redact at the same time. We estimate the time will be approximately 5% search and compilation time, 80% segregation time, 10% redaction time, and 5% reproduction time for each record. Fee Estimate For the approximately 1,759 total records for Requests 1, 2, and 4 that have been located to date, it would take an estimated additional 87.95 hours of total employee time to complete the District’s search for, compilation, review, segregation, redaction, and reproduction of all requested records, for a total initial fee of $2198.75… To the extent any records must be copied or printed for redaction or otherwise in order to respond to your request, there may be additional associated fees of $0.05 per page…

Christine Lyons, M.Ed., PhD SPR25/3019 Page 5 October 24, 2025 If you would like to modify the scope of your request, such as by including particular and/or modified search terms, subject matters, types of records, specific dates/narrowed time frames, etc., we may be able to complete these processes more efficiently and reduce any corresponding fees… Following Mr. York’s modification of Request 4, in a subsequent response on September 30, 2025, the School stated, “…even with your proposed revisions to request 4, I do not expect there to be any meaningful cost saving… The fee… remains unchanged.” Current Appeal In his appeal petition, Mr. York stated: The fee estimate is unreasonable and appears designed to prevent access... [T]hese records should not contain exempt information under the cited exemptions. The continued delay, excessive fees, and vague explanations undermine transparency and give the impression that the District is intentionally obstructing disclosure. In an email to this office on October 21, 2025, in support of his appeal, Mr. York provided an email related to a previous request in which a School employee stated to another School employee, “[c]an you over estimate the time that it would take you to compile/copy the invoices requested… Hopefully, when I let them know the cost they will not want to do it.” Mr. York argued, “[t]his appears to reflect a broader culture within LPS regarding how public requests are handled.” On October 22, 2025, the School apologized for the contents of the email and stated, “[p]lease know that this employee’s communication does not reflect the values of our district, as our past practice for years has been not to issue any charges whatsoever for public records requests.” Fee Waivers G. L. c. 66, § 10(d)(v) provides the following with respect to waiving a fee for the production of responsive records: the records access officer may waive or reduce the amount of any fee charged under this subsection upon a showing that disclosure of a requested record is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requestor, or upon a showing that the requestor lacks the financial ability to pay the full amount of the reasonable fee. Please be advised, although the Supervisor may encourage fees to be waived, the Supervisor may not mandate that a records access officer waive fees assessed for complying with a public records request; rather, as described above, the records access officer may waive or

Christine Lyons, M.Ed., PhD SPR25/3019 Page 6 October 24, 2025 reduce the amount of any fee upon a showing of various factors. See G. L. c. 66, § 10 (d)(v); see also 950 C.M.R. 32.07(2)(k). In light of the School’s response, I encourage Mr. York and the School to communicate further in order to facilitate producing records efficiently and affordably. Mr. York may wish to narrow his requests or include additional factors to enable the search to be processed. G. L. c. 66, § l0(a)(i). See G. L. c. 66, § 10(b)(vii) (a municipality shall suggest a reasonable modification of the scope of the request or offer to assist the requestor to modify the scope of the request if doing so would enable the municipality to produce the records sought more efficiently and affordably). Any revision to the request would result in the requirement to issue a revised fee estimate. Conclusion Accordingly, I will now consider this administrative appeal closed. If issues remain after the parties communicate further, Mr. York may file a further appeal within ninety (90) days. See 950 C.M.R 32.08(1). Sincerely, Manza Arthur Supervisor of Records cc: Kyle York