Mayor Rob Ford is attempting to prevent the release of documents related to his being fired as a high school football coach.

The Toronto Catholic District School Board decided in March to disclose the documents, but Ford was allowed the mandatory 30 days to consider an appeal to the province’s information and privacy commissioner. He has now appealed, the board said Monday.

Ford’s chief of staff did not respond to a request to explain why the mayor wants to keep the information secret.

The appeal means that it’s likely to be several more months, at least, before the public gets to see what is in the package of more than 100 documents. It has already been 10 months since the Star filed its original freedom of information request.

The school board initially rejected that request on the grounds that Ford, a volunteer, was a “quasi”-employee, a claim mocked by experts in employment law. The Star appealed to the commissioner and won. The board then prepared to disclose the package, but Ford got the right to intervene because he is discussed in the emails, letters and notes.

“The original decision by the commission was for us to release. We don’t know specifically what those objections might be from Mr. Ford, so we’ll have to wait and see,” said board spokesman John Yan. “We will be adhering to whatever ruling was made by the IPC.”

Ford’s decade-long tenure as coach at Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School helped him craft a political persona as a conservative who cares about the disadvantaged, even though he opposes many government programs meant to help them. Two of the three paragraphs in the “About Rob” section on his 2014 campaign website are devoted to his coaching and his charitable football foundation.

An index prepared by the board suggests the contested documents shed light on the circumstances that led to his termination. They also appear to provide a glimpse of what the board’s then-director of education, Bruce Rodrigues, said to Ford behind closed doors.

One of the documents describes April 2013 “staff concerns re: Don Bosco coach’s presence in the school.” Another includes January 2013 emails related to a “meeting about Don Bosco football issues.” A third contains March 2013 emails involving Rodrigues about Ford’s requests for “access” to Don Bosco, and a draft of a letter to Ford on that issue.

There is also a “letter from Toronto Police chief to Don Bosco coach re: police background check”; “talking points” for Rodrigues’ final meeting with the mayor and Councillor Doug Ford in the mayor’s office; a draft of Rodrigues’ letter to the mayor on his dismissal; and correspondence between Rodrigues, then-principal Ugo Rossi, and others about the Sun News television interview that appears to have prompted the board to review the mayor’s role at the school.

The firing came only a week after Ford’s crack cocaine scandal broke, but it had been in the works before the scandal. Ford had angered the board, and much of the Don Bosco faculty, with a February interview in which he said Don Bosco players “come from gangs” and from “broken homes” and that Don Bosco is a “tough school” in a “tough area.”

Board officials, the school’s parent council, and the offensive coordinator on Ford’s coaching staff said the mayor’s claims were inaccurate.

In separate news on Monday, the municipal government disclosed that it spent $25,391 on outside lawyers in 2013 to fight residents’ appeals of the city’s decisions on freedom of information requests for records related to Rob Ford and Doug Ford. The spending was approved by the city, not the Fords themselves, under a policy approved by council in 2011.