Open Commonwealth, v. Dudley-Charlton Regional School District (SPR 20260982)

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts William Francis Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth Public Records Division Manza Arthur Supervisor of Records March 30, 2026 SPR26/0982 Celeste Andrade Records Access Officer Dudley-Charlton Regional School District 68 Dudley-Oxford Road Dudley, MA 01571 Dear Ms. Andrade: I have received the petition of Open Commonwealth (requestor) appealing the response of the Dudley-Charlton Regional School District (School) to a request for public records. See G. L. c. 66, § 10A; see also 950 C.M.R. 32.08(1). On March 4, 2026, the requestor sought: All communications from January 1, 2026, through January 15, 2026, where:  The communication(s) originated from/were authored by [an identified individual] and;  The communications included any of the following words/terms/phrases o paraprofessional(s) and/or; o student(s) with disabilities and/or; o classroom(s) This request includes but is not limited to electronic and/or physical documents. This request seeks responsive documents be delivered in electronic format and in the format in which they are regularly maintained and specifically includes all electronic metadata. The School responded on March 18, 2026, providing a fee estimate. Unsatisfied with the School’s response, and objecting to the fees, the requestor petitioned this office, and this appeal, SPR26/0982, 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 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

Celeste Andrade SPR26/0982 Page 2 March 30, 2026 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 the requestor’s appeal petition, the requestor contends: . . . This “response” fails all specificity requirements and fails to enumerate the number of responsive records. The district is deliberately attempting to obfuscate and deny the constitutionally protected petitioning activities of making public records requests. The district provides no specific exemptions, no responsive record counts, no specific estimates for segregation and redactions, and no specific claims as to exemptions available to the specific responsive records. . . . The School’s March 18th Fee Estimate In its March 18, 2026 response, the School provided the following information in support of its $50 fee estimate: The District has conducted a preliminary search in response to this request, but we have not yet completed the search for, compilation, segregation, redaction, or reproduction of all of the potentially responsive records. Based upon our preliminary search, completing the process for this response will take a substantial amount of time at a significant cost to the District. In addition, records responsive to these requests are likely to contain a substantial amount of confidential, privileged, and otherwise exempt information, all of which must be segregated and/or redacted prior to producing any responsive records to you. As such, the District has determined that it is unable to further absorb the cost of responding this request without charging a fee as described below.

Celeste Andrade SPR26/0982 Page 3 March 30, 2026 Potential Exemptions: Because your request specifically seeks records from a public school teacher with terms related to the education of students, the search is likely to return many emails about individual students. 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), which exempts all information specifically or by necessary implication exempted from disclosure by statute, 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), 20U.S.C. §1232g. In addition, records that allow for indirect identification of a student in relation to their education records are also exempt from disclosure, including without limitation students who are identifiable based on other information in your possession. See Champa v. Weston Public Schools, 473 Mass. 86(2015) (citing 34 C.F.R. §§ 99.3, 99.31(b)(1)). While the District has not completed its review, segregation, redaction, and reproduction of all potentially responsive records pending payment of the fee identified below, any records must be reviewed to ascertain whether they contain such exempt information and, if so, those records must be withheld or redacted by law under Exemption (a). Your requests seek communications involving District staff who may 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 a privileged attorney-client communication, such information would be protected from disclosure under M.G.L. c.4, §7(26)(a). . . . The District’s teachers are also unionized, and communications between employee organizations and their members present on the District’s email servers are not public records pursuant to M.G.L. c.150E, §5A. As a result, any such communications will be exempt from disclosure and must be segregated and redacted under M.G.L. c.4, §7(26)(a). . . . Without limitation, private information in responsive records is likely to include information about individual students as well as personal email addresses and other contact information contained in any communications. Personal contact information must be redacted as exempt pursuant to M.G.L. c.4, §7(26)(a),which exempts from public disclosure records which are specifically or by necessary implication exempted from disclosure by statute, and M.G.L. c.66, §10B and M.G.L.c.150E, §5A(d), which provide 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). . . .

Celeste Andrade SPR26/0982 Page 4 March 30, 2026 This personal contact information may also be exempt pursuant to M.G.L. c.4, §7(26)(o) or (p), to the extent applicable and so would be subject to redaction or withholding. Finally, please note that because the response process has not been completed, the potential exemptions listed above are illustrative but not exhaustive. Given the scope of your requests and the employee from whom records are sought, we expect additional exempt information may be discovered during the course of review of the potentially responsive records, including without limitation intellectual property (a), personnel records(c), and tests/examinations (l). The letters in the parentheses refer to the corresponding exemption in M.G.L. c.4, §7(26). . . . Fee Estimate: Based on the nature of the requested records, we anticipate all of the segregation and redaction process for these records will be required by law for information that is covered by Exemption (a); however, to the extent there are any segregation/redactions not required by law, the District will not charge for the related segregation/redaction time. . . . In the most-recent decennial U.S. Census, the member towns of the District— Dudley and Charlton—had a total population exceeding 20,000, and as a result the District may charge you for all time involved in responding to your request after two (2) hours. Given the nature and complexity of the exemptions, privileges, and confidentiality requirements cited above, and the wide-ranging and private nature of the related information, the 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 District’s central office staff and/or IT department who are all 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. The District’s response to your request will require the appropriate District employee to search for responsive records, save all records located to a single file, manually review each record to determine whether it is in fact responsive, redact any exempt information with the labeling and explanation required by law, save these documents to another file for production to you, and then convert and reproduce them in a format compliant with applicable law. 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

Celeste Andrade SPR26/0982 Page 5 March 30, 2026 reproduction step, because the District would search/compile at the same time and segregate/redact at the same time. We estimate the time will be comprised on average of approximately 10% search and compilation time, 65% segregation time required by law, 20% redaction time required by law, and 5% reproduction time for each record. Based on the District’s experience responding to public records requests and the process described in this letter, and considering the applicable exemptions, the time needed for redaction, and the number of responsive records already located (which we expect will vary in page length but will typically include many pages), we estimate that it will take an additional four (4) hours of total chargeable employee time to fully search for, compile, review, segregate, redact, and reproduce each record in accordance with applicable law. As such, the District’s good faith fee estimate is $50.00 (4 total hours, less 2 hours of free time = 2 hours x $25.00/hour). Reasonableness of the Fee Estimate Although the School has estimated that the process of compiling, reviewing, and preparing responsive documents for production will take 4 hours of employee time, the School has not provided sufficient explanation of why 4 hours of employee time is necessary. Specifically, it is not clear from the School’s estimate the number of pages that the School intends to segregate or redact and the number of minutes that the School must spend per page for review. For the reasons discussed above, I find the School must revise its fee estimate or provide further explanation of how the total fee of $50 assessed in its March 18th estimate is consistent with G. L. c. 66, § 10(d). This office encourages the requestor and the School to communicate further in order to facilitate providing records more efficiently and affordably. 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, the School is ordered to provide the requestor with a response to the request, provided in a manner consistent with this order, the Public Records Law and its Regulations within ten business days. A copy of any such response must be provided to this office. It is preferable to send an electronic copy of the response to this office at pre@sec.state.ma.us. The requestor may further appeal the substantive nature of the School’s response within ninety (90) days. See 950 C.M.R. 32.08(1).

Celeste Andrade SPR26/0982 Page 6 March 30, 2026 Sincerely, Manza Arthur Supervisor of Records cc: Open Commonwealth