Hartford — The Hartford School District agreed to pay $75,000 through its insurer to settle a lawsuit alleging that school officials didn’t do enough to stop a kindergartner from being sexually abused and harassed by a classmate, according to documents released on Thursday.

The school district previously had declined to release the amount of the settlement, which was reached on March 20, just six days before the case was slated to head to trial in federal court in Burlington. As reasons for withholding the information, the superintendent and an attorney for the district cited a confidentiality clause as well as three exemptions to Vermont’s public records law.

On Thursday afternoon, attorney Bernie Lambek, who represented the school district when the Valley News filed a public records request for the settlement terms, emailed the newspaper the settlement agreement. Noting that the family of the boy received a net payment of $37,500 after attorneys’ fees and expenses were paid and that the amount paid to the plaintiffs’ lawyers didn’t cover litigation expenses, Lambek disputed suggestions that the settlement represented an acknowledgment of wrongdoing.

“The District settled because it was in its interest to avoid spending further resources (both money and time), not because the claims were well-founded,” he said in the email that accompanied the settlement documents. “They were not.”

The entire settlement payment is covered by the Hartford School District’s insurance company, Lambek wrote.

Asked why the parties agreed to amend the settlement to drop the confidentiality agreement, Lambek said in a telephone interview that he wouldn’t discuss “strategy.”

In the email, Lambek wrote that the parties had been planning to make the information public.

“While the confidentiality agreement was in place, we were obligated to protect these records from public dissemination,” Lambek wrote.

“While we were working behind the scenes to conclude this matter and to make the records publicly available, a process that took just a few days, you did your best to paint the school district and its attorneys as conspiring to hide the truth in violation of the law,” he wrote, alluding to an April 4 Valley Newseditorial and a column written by Jim Kenyon published the same day.

The editorial and column separately contended the Hartford School District and its attorneys weren’t being transparent and were withholding information that the public had a right to know.

The school district previously had argued that three exemptions to the Vermont public records law allowed it to keep the terms of the settlement confidential — those protecting student records, records relevant to litigation, and records relating specifically to negotiation of contracts.

In his Thursday email, Lambek said the student records exemption “can be argued,” but maintained that the settlement agreement is a contract and therefore exempt from public disclosure. The exemption pertaining to litigation covers ongoing legal matters. The case hadn’t been formally closed when the Valley News sought information about its terms, so the parties were within their rights to decline to release that information, Lambek wrote in his email.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont contended that the Hartford School District couldn’t stay silent on the settlement details, and that the exemptions the district cited for withholding the information didn’t apply in the case.

The parties in the case had sought a ruling in federal court to seal the documents; Judge Christina Reiss earlier this week asked them to provide reasons to seal the settlement terms and also to suggest proposed redactions.

Hartford School Superintendent Tom DeBalsi said he had no comment on Thursday.

Jerome O’Neill, one of several attorneys to represent the family, declined to comment on the proceedings. A message left for attorney Jeff Herman, of Florida, wasn’t immediately returned.

The settlement agreement, now available through court records, stipulates that the boy’s family and their lawyers have agreed to make no public statements on the matter.

The family, who is from Florida but moved to Vermont so their son could attend a speech therapy program at the University of Vermont, sued on three counts. Two of those counts — negligence and loss of parental consortium — were set to head to trial.

The parents alleged their then-5-year-old son, “John Doe,” was sexually abused and harassed by a fellow student at the Ottauquechee School during the 2012-13 school year.

Despite repeated attempts to get the staff and superintendent to address the situation, the abuse continued, according to their lawsuit. The school district denied the allegations in its response to the lawsuit in September 2016.

Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.