Kyle York has long had concerns about how business is done at Lexington Public Schools. Dissatisfied with how the district supported his daughter with dyslexia, York began requesting a series of records last April. Jumping off another parent’s research, soon he was seeking expense invoices that would explain, for example, how the administration spent tens of thousands of dollars at the Beauport Hotel in Gloucester.
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The whole time, York felt Lexington officials were stonewalling his requests, or charging him exorbitant fees, hoping he would go away. An email he recently discovered and shared with the Globe shows, at least in one instance, his suspicions were dead on.
“Can you over estimate the time that it would take you to compile/copy the invoices requested and let me know when you have a chance?” one district employee wrote in a May 12, 2025, email, which York obtained in a broader record release. “Hopefully, when I let [York] know the cost they will not want to do it.”
The request in question ended up getting fulfilled for free, rather than York having to pay the $1,000 estimate, as part of the same data release that the email was in. Lexington Superintendent Julie Hackett apologized to York after he notified her of the duplicitous email last month. But York and other residents have been assessed even higher cost estimates for other requests, documents show, and they suspect the intentional over-charging in this casereflects a broader culture at Lexington Public Schools.