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The family of South Hadley High School freshman Phoebe Prince, who hanged herself in January 2010 after bullying by her classmates, received $225,000 in a settlement with the town later that year. The terms of the settlement were made public for the first time Tuesday.

SOUTH HADLEY - The $225,000 paid to the parents of South Hadley High School freshman Phoebe Prince to settle a complaint filed in connection with her 2010 suicide "does not reflect the injury caused," a family member said in a written statement Tuesday - the same day the terms settlement became public.

"However, its revelation now shines a bright light on the admission and culpability" of school officials, Prince's uncle Edward O'Brien wrote in a statement emailed to the Gazette by Luke Gelinas, a family friend and outspoken critic of South Hadley school leaders.

O'Brien said the Prince family is "relieved" that school officials, including Superintendent Gus Sayer, who announced his retirement in August, former high school principal Dan Smith and members of the School Committee, "can no longer keep the terms of the settlement a secret."

Neither South Hadley School Committee Chairman Dale Carey, nor former committee chairman Edward Boisselle, could be reached for comment Tuesday.

The Prince family had filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination after their daughter hanged herself nearly two years ago following weeks of bullying by high school classmates. The documents were released Tuesday by Slate reporter Emily Bazelon, who covered the case and later sued seeking information on the settlement reached in October 2010.

The release of the settlement details follows an order issued Friday by state Superior Court Judge Mary-Lou Rup in a case filed on Bazelon's behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

The agreement, which is available online at Slate's website (www.slate.com) states that in exchange for the payment from the town and the School Department, the Prince family waived its right to take any legal action in connection with Phoebe's death. They also agreed not to disclose terms of the settlement and to limit any public comment to the statement that "the matter has been resolved."

William Newman, Bazelon's lawyer and director of the ACLU's Western Massachusetts office in Northampton, declined to speculate on what the terms of the settlement reflect or how they might have been reached.

"The reason the ACLU brought this lawsuit was because the public had a right to this information," Newman emphasized. "The lawsuit vindicates the rights under the public records law that there should be transparency in government affairs."

Prince's suicide and the complaint filed by her parents received international media attention but the terms of the settlement had not been publicly disclosed before Tuesday. Judge Rup's ruling set a deadline of 4 p.m. on Friday for the School Department to release the documents or file an appeal.

Bazelon, who is currently writing a book about bullying laws, had sought the details of the settlement since May of last year. She made several unsuccessful requests to town and school official for the settlement terms.

In a comment posted Tuesday on Slate's website, Bazelon noted that the agreement states that information about the settlement could be communicated by a representative of the South Hadley schools. "This is a little mysterious," she wrote. "But it suggests that it was the school district or the insurance company, rather than the Prince family, which wanted the settlement to remain secret."

Gelinas - who has filed a federal lawsuit against South Hadley school leaders in connection with being forcibly removed from a School Committee meeting in 2010 - agreed. "It was never the intention of the family to have this embargoed," he said.

South Hadley town counsel Edward J. Ryan Jr. had argued against disclosing the agreement with Prince's family on the grounds the settlement was paid with money from the town's insurance company rather than taxpayer funds. In addition, he argued the Prince family was barred from disclosing the figure and that making that information public would violate attorney-client privilege.

Ryan did not return phone calls from the Gazette on Tuesday seeking comment on the terms of the settlement.

South Hadley Select Board Chair Robert Judge expressed relief that the document is now public. "I'm glad it's out, it's just that simple," he said.

Judge stressed that the Select Board has not been involved in any decisions about the Prince family's lawsuit.

"What I and others in this town have been trying to do for two years is to use this tragedy to talk to people about suicide," said Judge, who helped form a community coalition in the wake of the girl's death. "That's as important today as it was two years ago."