Between July 2024 and May 2026, Sudbury Public Schools paid its outside law firm, Valerio, Dominello & Hillman of Westwood, more than $109,000 in legal fees. The invoices are a public record, available at the bottom of this post. Read line by line, they tell a detailed story: how the School Committee operated, what it directed its lawyers to do, and what it cost the town of Sudbury.

In short: legal spending more than doubled after April 2025, when Karyn Jones became chair and two new members joined the committee. And what the lawyers were working on significantly changed.

The Numbers

The staff of the Sudbury Monitor reviewed two dozen invoices covering July 2024 through May 2026. Eleven were billed before Jones became chair, during the tenures of Silvia Nerssissian and Nicole Burnard; and thirteen after Jones is listed, beginning in June 2025. That is also when Elizabeth Sues and Jessica McCready joined the Committee following their election at the spring 2025 Town Meeting.

The eleven pre-Jones invoices totaled $30,763. The thirteen that followed totaled $78,342 – two and a half times more. The average invoice rose from $2,797 to $6,026.

This was not a single runaway bill. The five largest recent invoices each topped $8,000: April 2026 ($13,012), December 2025 ($10,611), January 2026 ($9,052), May 2026 ($8,943), and November 2025 ($8,284). Before that chair change, the largest single invoice was $5,769 – that one driven by a month of heavy union bargaining in the spring of 2025.

What the Money Paid For

A review of the 589 billing entries shows the increase was not simply more of the same. The mix of work changed.

Bargaining and labor remained the largest category in both periods: $20,198 before, $42,684 after. This is not unusual on its own; collective bargaining with the district’s unions is a standard and often expensive use of legal counsel. The entries show attorneys traveling to and representing the Committee at bargaining sessions, communicating with union negotiators, and attending both public and executive session meetings. The district reached contract agreements with the Sudbury Education Association, the Nurses’ Association, and custodial employees during this stretch. And, as noted, the pre-Jones period was not quiet: the $9,244 invoice in May 2025 was itself a bargaining month. Even so, post-Jones bargaining spend more than doubled.

Personnel and superintendent-related work is a different story. Before Jones became chair, personnel entries totaled $418. After: $16,482, nearly all of it concentrated in the first four months of 2026.

Open meeting law complaints cost $2,469 before and $5,299 after. The district was spending money defending the Committee against formal complaints filed by residents, including one by a fellow Committee member. At least five distinct complainants appear in the post-Jones billing.

The Extended Day RFP was entirely a post-Jones matter. The $2,945 in RFP-related legal fees, including $569 for drafting and sending a cease-and-desist letter to the incumbent provider. The larger portion covers legal review of the RFP itself, research on procurement law under Chapter 30B, and strategy sessions around the bidding process. One entry reads: “Assess issues regarding RFP, current vendor extended day program; review OIG bid protest information.”

The Superintendent

The most detailed account in the invoices is the departure of Superintendent Brad Crozier. The billing record traces it across four distinct phases.

Phase 1: Early signals (June–September 2025). The billing starts with routine entries: “Communications with Superintendent.” By late August, the language changes. Multiple consecutive entries describe counsel “attention to draft notice” – the first sign of a formal personnel action being prepared. The three months of Phase 1 total $1,137 in personnel billing.

Phase 2: Escalation (January 2026). A gap of three quiet months (October–December) is followed by a sudden spike. On January 21, billing entries describe “review document and conference with Ms. Jones; strategize regarding same; draft talking points,” alongside multiple calls to “employee’s counsel” – Crozier’s attorney. The January 23 entry reads: “Conferences with Ms. Jones; review contracts; call with Mr. Crozier and Ms. Jones.” January alone billed $2,704 in personnel work.

Phase 3: Settlement (February–March 2026). The two most expensive personnel-billing months on record. The bills show weeks of back-and-forth: drafting settlement agreements, reviewing communications from Jones, calls with Crozier’s attorney, and preparing for repeated executive sessions. By late March, the bills show an agreement being finalized and sent to “counsel for employee.” February billed $5,029; March, $5,205. One February 26 entry captures how entangled the matters had become: “Review open meeting law complaint; strategize same; prepare for executive session”. The complaints against the Committee and the superintendent’s exit were handled in the same sitting, on the same day

Phase 4: Replacement (April 2026). A signed settlement agreement was delivered April 9. The School Committee made a public announcement. The billing then shows entries for an “Assistant Superintendent Contract” (April 17) and three straight entries for “Interim Superintendent Contract” (April 28-30). The district will end the school year without a permanent replacement.

The public meeting agendas show the boundaries of what those executive sessions could address. The February and March sessions were posted for contract strategy – “negotiations with nonunion personnel (specifically the Superintendent).” The reasons behind the separation were never posted as a subject for public discussion.

Alongside all of this ran a separate, public process. Policy CBI – Evaluation of the Superintendent appeared on the January 20 agenda for discussion, went out for counsel review on January 26, and was adopted on the February 9 consent calendar – four days after a closed 9:30 a.m. executive session called specifically to discuss negotiations with the superintendent.

Open Meeting Law Complaints

At least five residents filed open meeting law complaints against the Committee between October 2025 and April 2026 – the first in mid-October, within months of the chair change. The district’s lawyers drafted and submitted a response to each. That work accounts for $5,299 in post-Jones legal fees.

In each response, the Committee’s law firm concluded the Committee had not violated the Open Meeting Law. Those conclusions have been cited publicly as evidence the Committee was cleared. It is worth being precise about what they are: the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Division of Open Government, the state body that actually rules on these complaints, has not issued a determination on any of them. The responses are the Committee’s own position, prepared on its behalf.

The November 24, 2025 agenda placed those responses, “including associated legal service costs,” on the consent calendar alongside routine business. They were approved without separate discussion.

Governing Through Counsel

Beyond any single matter, the invoices reveal something about how this Committee operated day to day.

For most boards, outside counsel is on call for specific legal questions and active disputes. The post-Jones billing reads more like a parallel operating layer.

Direct communications between committee members and the lawyers, primarily from entries showing the attorneys in contact with Jones, McCready, or Sues – rose from $6,127 to $20,946. There are 128 such entries after the chair change, threading through nearly every matter in the bills. A sample of what they describe:

• June 7, 2025: Jones’s first full month as chair: “Communications from and to Ms. Jones regarding curing prior noncompliance” – an OML compliance matter in her opening weeks.
• November 29–30, 2025: A Saturday morning call with Jones about how to handle “agenda requests for Superintendent Performance,” then a joint call with Jones and McCready the next day about “open session agenda items.”
• December 3, 2025: McCready asks counsel about members’ rights on the negotiations subcommittee, and separately about the 48-hour meeting-posting requirement.
• April 8, 2026: “Prepare agenda and motion language, communications with School Committee Chair” – the lawyers writing the public meeting agenda.
• April 16, 2026: “RFP Inquiry: Attention to documents; communications with Ms. Sues.”

That last date invites a comparison. At the public meeting on April 16, 2026, Jones said: “the Chair has no power outside of the Committee…we make decisions together.” Yet the billing in the months before shows more than 100 separate attorney consults logged to Jones or her colleagues – across personnel strategy, OML complaints, the RFP, bargaining, parent communications, and agenda preparation.

Attendance at meetings by outside counsel rose from $1,329 to $8,365. Attorneys began traveling to and sitting in on regular public School Committee meetings, not just executive session and bargaining.

Pre-Jones total: $12,318. Post-Jones total: $43,569.

Counting every entry that touches any governance-related lens once (including executive sessions, member communications, meeting attendance, public records, and OML), the total rose from $12,318 before the chair change to $43,569 after.

What the Invoices Show – and What they Don’t

These bills do not prove motive, and they cannot reveal what was said behind closed doors. But they do show a sharp change in how much legal counsel was used, how often the chair and other members were in direct contact with the firm, and how many ordinary functions of the Committee – including drafting agendas, resident questions, and attending meetings – were routed through lawyers. They also surface questions they cannot answer: how the superintendent’s removal began, what the open meeting law complaints actually alleged, and how the district’s own legal filings characterize those events. Those questions are worth following.

Editor’s note: The invoices were obtained through a public records request under M.G.L. c. 66, § 10. All figures come from a line-by-line review of the billing records available below.