Rounds, Joseph v. Canton, Town of - Public Schools (SPR 20260520)

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts William Francis Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth Public Records Division Manza Arthur Supervisor of Records February 27, 2026 SPR26/0520 Brian Lynch Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations Canton Public Schools 960 Washington Street Canton, MA 02021 Dear Mr. Lynch: I have received the petition of Joseph Rounds appealing the response of the Canton Public Schools (School) to a request for public records. See G. L. c. 66, § 10A; see also 950 C.M.R. 32.08(1). On January 23, 2026, Mr. Rounds requested various “communications/ documents” between identified individuals in relation to specific search terms from January 23, 2023 to January 23, 2026. Previous Petition This request was the subject of a previous petition from the School. See SPR26/0436 Determination of the Supervisor of Records (February 12, 2026). In my February 12th determination, I found that the School may assess fees for the segregation and redaction of the responsive records. On February 6, 2026, the School provided Mr. Rounds with a fee estimate. Objecting to the fees, Mr. Rounds petitioned this office, and this appeal, SPR26/0520, was opened as a result. Status of the Requestor Please note that the reason for which a requestor seeks access to or a copy of a public record does not afford any greater right of access to the requested information than other persons in the general public. The Public Records Law does not distinguish between requestors. Access to a record pursuant to the Public Records Law rests on the content of the record and not the circumstances of the requestor. See Bougas v. Chief of Police of Lexington, 371 Mass. 59, 64 (1976). Accordingly, Mr. Rounds status will play no role in a determination as to whether the records should be disclosed or redacted under the Public Records Law. 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

Joseph Rounds SPR26/0520 Page 2 February 27, 2026 The Public Records Law The Public Records Law strongly favors disclosure by creating a presumption that all governmental records are public records. G. L. c. 66, § 10A(d); 950 C.M.R. 32.03(4). “Public records” is broadly defined to include all documentary materials or data, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by any officer or employee of any agency or municipality of the Commonwealth, unless falling within a statutory exemption. G. L. c. 4, § 7(26). It is the burden of the records custodian to demonstrate the application of an exemption in order to withhold a requested record. G. L. c. 66, § 10(b)(iv); 950 C.M.R. 32.06(3); see also Dist. Attorney for the Norfolk Dist. v. Flatley, 419 Mass. 507, 511 (1995) (custodian has the burden of establishing the applicability of an exemption). To meet the specificity requirement a custodian must not only cite an exemption, but must also state why the exemption applies to the withheld or redacted portion of the responsive record. If there are any fees associated with a response, a written good faith estimate must be provided. G. L. c. 66, § 10(b)(viii); see also 950 C.M.R. 32.07(2). Once fees are paid, a records custodian must provide the responsive records. 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). Current Appeal In his appeal petition, Mr. Rounds states that he is “challenging the proportionality and methodology of the Canton Public Schools’ revised fee estimate of 149 hours (approximately

Joseph Rounds SPR26/0520 Page 3 February 27, 2026 $3,675) associated with my narrowed public records request in SPR26/0436.” Among other things, Mr. Rounds also states the following: Under G.L. c. 66, §10(b)(vii), a municipality must use its superior knowledge of its records to suggest reasonable modifications that would enable production “more efficiently and affordably.” While the District proposed limiting search terms, it did not: - Propose narrowing by date segmentation (e.g., year-by-year production); - Propose rolling production; - Propose excluding duplicate threads; - Provide an estimate based on narrower subsets (e.g., communications involving 51A or custody terms only). Given the Supervisor’s prior encouragement for cooperative narrowing, I remain willing to further refine the request. However, meaningful refinement requires transparency regarding how the 8,994 emails were identified and categorized. The School’s February 6th Fee Estimate In its February 6, 2026 response, the School provides a total fee estimate of $3,025, and provides the following information in support of its fee estimate: This request is framed as a further amendment to your November 26, 2025 request and your December 23, 2025 request, both which the District responded to and you appealed. See SPR25/3644 and SPR26/0084. With the parameters provided in your amended request, the District has conducted a search for electronic communications between the above listed “Custodians” based on the search terms provided. The District is not aware of any physical documents constituting summaries, notes, guidance, or drafts, as requested, and assumes that if any such records exists electronically it would be found within its search for email communications. In total, this search has generated only a slightly lower number of potentially responsive emails communications from your last request, specifically 7,396 emails. It must be reiterated that, as previously noted, the nature of the requested information will likely result in a substantial majority of the requested information being either withheld or redacted. The District will therefore need to carefully review each email for any exemptions pursuant to the Public Records Law. First, responsive records relating to specifically named students likely would be wholly exempt from disclosure or subject to redaction under Section 7(26)(a), the statutory exemption, based on the District’s obligation to maintain the confidentiality of personally-identifying student information, beyond directory information, under federal and state law and regulations (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 C.F.R. 99; 603 CMR 23.00). Education records are exempt from disclosure

Joseph Rounds SPR26/0520 Page 4 February 27, 2026 pursuant to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”). Education records are records, no matter their form or location, which directly relate to a student and are maintained by an educational agency or institute. See Champa v. Weston Public Schools, 473 Mass. 86, 91-92. Personally identifiable student information includes a student’s name, name of the student’s parents or other family members, address of the student or student’s family, or any other information that alone or in combination is linked or linkable to a specific student. See 34 C.F.R 99. Here, you are seeking communications which specifically reference your children, and therefore the likelihood of having to withhold or redact responsive communications is high. Additionally, communications between the District and the District’s legal counsel sent for the purposes of seeking or providing legal advice are attorney- client privileged and accordingly are not public records pursuant to Exemption (a) of the Public Records Law. M.G.L. c. 4, § 7, Clause 26(a) (excluding from disclosure records that are “specifically or by necessary implication exempted from disclosure by statute”). “The privilege enable[s] clients to make full disclosure to legal counsel of all relevant facts . . . so that counsel may render fully informed legal advice.” Suffolk Constr. Co. Inc. v. Div. of Cap. Asset Mgmt., 449 Mass. 444 (2007). Where you have specifically requested communications with District’s legal counsel, the District will need to review all potentially responsive emails to determine whether such communications are attorney-client privileged, and therefore are subject to redaction or withholding, prior to production. Finally, the District anticipates needing to make redactions pursuant to Exemption (c), the privacy exemption. M.G.L. c. 4, §, Clause 26(c). Under this exemption, information the release of which could constitute an invasion of personal privacy would be exempt from disclosure. See People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) v. Dep’t of Agric. Res., 477 Mass. 208, 292 (2017) (weighing privacy interests versus public interest by assessing “(1) whether disclosure would result in personal embarrassment to an individual of normal sensibilities, (2) whether the materials sought contain intimate details of a highly personal nature, and (3) whether the same information is available from other sources”). The District believes that communications relating to discussions about custody orders, parental complaints, and parental communications, while potentially also exempt pursuant to FERPA, are matters of a highly personal nature the release of which would result in personal embarrassment to an individual of normal sensibilities, and is likely not available from other sources. Please note that the District is obligated to respond to this public records request in the same manner irrespective of who is making the request, based solely on the contents of the records being requested. . . . Here, because the District is within a community with a population of more than 20,000 people, it will not include the first two hours in its fee petition. The

Joseph Rounds SPR26/0520 Page 5 February 27, 2026 District will charge $25 per hour to search for, compile, segregate, redact and produce the requested records based on the aforementioned Exemption (a), the statutory exemption. That rate is justified given that the lowest paid employee who is capable of performing the task has an effective hourly rate that exceeds $25 per hour. The District estimates that it will take approximately 123 hours to search for, compile, segregate, and redact records pursuant to FERPA, the attorney-client privilege, and the privacy exemption, in response to your request. This conservative calculation does not include a search or review for the other internal notes and documents requested, as the District believes that this digital search would likely contain the bulk of the requested records. This search resulted in 7,396 emails. The District estimates that it will take approximately 1 minute to review each potentially responsive email. This equals approximately 123 hours. The fee estimate to produce the records sought in the request is therefore $3,025 (i.e. ((123 Hours – 2 Hours) X $25)). The actual fee to produce these records may vary based on the actual time spent to complete the necessary search and review process. Should you wish to further narrow or revise the scope of this request, for example, by narrowing the timeframe, the District would recalculate a good faith fee estimate accordingly[.] Appropriate Definitions, Parameters, and Time Frames In Friedman v. Div. of Admin. Law Appeal and Bureau of Special Educ. Appeals, the Suffolk Superior Court, in its Memorandum of Decision and Order on Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss, stated: [The requester] has a right to seek public records from his government, provided he does so in a reasonable manner. [The agencies], in turn, have a right not to be inundated with drain-the-ocean records requests, provided they fulfill the basic expectations of the [Public Records Law] in a fair and transparent manner. See Friedman v. Div. of Admin. Law Appeal and Bureau of Special Educ. Appeals, Suffolk Sup. No. 2284CV02061-C, at 3 (February 14, 2023). The Court in Friedman noted, “the extraordinary volume of records called for in this case has compelled the Defendants to produce responsive materials in a ‘rolling’ fashion, rather than in accordance with deadlines contemplated by the [Public Records Law].” Id. at 1. The Court stated that: [T]he parties shall be expected to agree upon, to the greatest extent possible, the following: (a) appropriate definitions, time frames, and parameters regarding substance and scope for the identification of requested documents;

Joseph Rounds SPR26/0520 Page 6 February 27, 2026 (b) appropriate search terms to be used for the retrieval of responsive documents; (c) a reasonable time frame for the production of requested documents, if the statute’s presumptive deadlines are not realistic; (d) appropriate rules to govern the withholding of documents falling within the scope of a statutory privilege or privacy doctrine; and (e) an appropriate methodology for computing the reasonable fees that may be charged for responsive document production. Id. at 2. This office encourages Mr. Rounds and the School to communicate directly in order to facilitate providing records more efficiently and affordably. Mr. Rounds may consider further narrowing the scope of his request to enable the School to provide the records more efficiently and affordably, as described in his appeal petition. The School must use its superior knowledge of the records to suggest any potential reasonable modifications to the request. 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). Conclusion If outstanding issues remain after Mr. Rounds and the School communicate further as described above, Mr. Rounds may file an appeal within ninety (90) days. See 950 C.M.R. 32.08(1). Sincerely, Manza Arthur Supervisor of Records cc: Joseph Rounds