A long meeting about a review of Westport’s special education program — with plenty of public comment — ended last night with a resolution, and a delay.
Despite strong support from residents for a special steering committee, with parental input, into the selection of a vendor to conduct the review, members voted unanimously to continue with their previous requests for proposals and quotes.
However, the BOE will extend the request process for quotes by 2 weeks, to allow more applications. They will then review the responses in a public meeting, where they will decide which vendors will be invited to submit proposals.
The vendor who is chosen will submit results directly to the Board of Education — not to the superintendent or other district officials.
Meeting last night in the Staples High School cafeteria (clockwise from left): Board of Education members Stephen Shackelford, Andy Frankel, Abby Tolan, Jill Dillon, Neil Phillips and Lee Goldstein; superintendent of schools Thomas Scarice, CFO Elio Longo, and assistant superintendents Anna Mahon, Michael Rizzo and John Bayers. BOE member Dorie Hordon is hidden between Phillips and Goldstein. (Photo/Catie Campagnino)
The Board, and members of the public, grappled with questions about the independence of the review process, and the extent of community members’ input — whether by committee, emails, focus groups or surveys.
There was debate too about whether the review would be “holistic” and include individual cases, along with the district’s compliance with legal mandates, or more narrow in scope.
Some members of the public — including students — spoke about their own experiences. Board members urged that the focus be on program effectiveness.
The BOE discussed the timing of the review, balancing the need for completion with the desire for thoroughness. Members also talked about the degree of oversight the Board would maintain throughout the process.
According to the BOE calendar, last night’s meeting was to be its final one of the school year. A date for the next one — to review the request for quotes — has not yet been set.
(Catie Campagnino contributed to this report.)
For months, Westport families of students with IEPs and 504 plans have shared painful accounts of their experiences with school administration. Unfortunately, leadership’s defensive and seemingly indifferent posture has only deepened a growing crisis of trust—a divide worsened by rumors of officials disparaging parent advocates. To fix a broken system, the Board must move past defensiveness. A massive, highly qualified network of parents, staff, and professionals is ready to contribute. The most efficient path forward is a collaborative committee that explicitly includes parent stakeholders. Further, because special education is not a curriculum, rather individualized educational plans, the only way to test the efficacy is to sample these plans from different categories of students with different learning issues. A qualified educational consultant will also advise that high risk categories such as all the settlements for private tuition should be analyzed.
Rosa,
As a Special Education teacher I want to learn more about what is going on! Can you tell me in a generalized way about disputes over IEP’s?
Stephanie – you can start by listening to the recordings of the Board of Ed meetings since January 2026 to get a sense of concerns families have. And you can FOIA the legal fees of the district’s outside counsel for special education matters and request redacted settlement agreements.
Ok, thanks!
Am I reading this right, that the issue is basically being tabled until the new school year?
No – it is not tabled. Consultants who want to submit their qualifications and bid for the review project will now have an extra 2 weeks or so to do so. The Board of Ed will review all qualifications of consultants who have responded to the initial bid documents. The Board will discuss and vote on these matters in a public hearing on dates to be determined. The public can comment at the hearings or send their opinions to the Board via email. At the moment, there will not be a steering committee inclusive of parent stakeholders.
It keeps happening. And it doesn’t have to.
Board of Education meetings—always rigid and generally rule-focused—now seem more cruel and counterproductive than ever.
At the June 11 Board of Education meeting, after a joyous, raucous celebration of retiring educators and PTA presidents, the gloom descended.
During the Public Comment portion of the evening, where community members often make considered suggestions about how the schools might improve, one special-education parent sidled up to the podium.
It’s often hard to face an imposing table of administrators and board members with a question, a comment, or a request. Every parent who walks to the podium can use some support.
The parent spoke. Several parents clapped to back her up.
“There’s no clapping,” the chair decreed. “We don’t have clapping at board meetings.”
After sitting through two hours of applause to acknowledge the town’s beloved educators and volunteers, the crowd was confused. But they stopped clapping.
Soon, the Greens Farms School PTA announced a gift for the school auditorium. There was a smattering of tentative applause.
“Yeah, you can clap,” the chair announced. “It’s okay.” Everyone clapped.
And then, at last night’s BOE meeting, devoted to special education, students and parents detailed harrowing stories about physical restraint, missed diagnoses, lifelong anguish, and financial devastation. One student read a statement that had people in the cafeteria and at home tearing up at its simple, compelling honesty. Almost everyone in the audience clapped.
They were silenced.
To recap: There’s no clapping, except when there’s clapping. It’s a rule, but it’s also not a rule. We can clap for people who donate their service and their money. We cannot clap for people who donate their ideas and relate their experiences.
Clapping does not slow down this “business meeting.” The finger-wagging does.
Denying people the right to express themselves, to support one another, to exhibit the basic impulses of community—and to do it inconsistently, based on who’s speaking and presumably what you think of what they’re saying—is more than a bad look. It’s censorship, plain and simple.
______________________________________
“Who can speak, who gets heard, and who makes rules about what one can say has always been more about power than about truth, fairness, or rational debate.” —Fara Dabhoiwala, “What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea” (Harvard University Press)
Bravo, Tom.
The claim in this post that “[t]here would be no parental involvement in the choice” of consultant is inaccurate. To step back, it was in view of community concerns that the administration decided to conduct a third-party review of its Special Education program and separately move up the state compliance audit. As originally proposed, the administration was going to select a vendor and run the review as it has conducted other program reviews in the schools. Taking community concerns and suggestions into account, the Board voted to have the Board select the consultant and have the consultant contract with the Board directly as its client rather than the administration as is ordinarily the case. By agreeing to have the full Board take on responsibility for selection and who gets selected to submit an RFP for the work, there will be open discussions of the candidates at publicly noticed meetings with discussion and input from the administration and full opportunity for public input, both in advance of the meetings when the candidates are known and during the meetings in advance of any votes. In addition to having full opportunity for the selection of an independent consultant, there is unanimous agreement that the consultant, once selected, should get input and hear from interested community members and parents through surveys, meetings and other methods that will be hashed out once a consultant is on board. This will be an important part of the review process.
The issue about whether to pass off the selection to some newly formed committee was a narrow one. That in itself would delay the process unnecessarily and would not add information to inform the selection. By agreeing to have the Board (rather than the administration or a new committee) take on ultimate responsibility for selecting a consultant after hearing from the community and the administration, and after reviewing the RFP responses from the consultants themselves, in no way did the Board shut out or limit the ability of parents to participate and continue make their voices heard in the selection of a consultant or to weigh in on the scope of the review.
Dan, you should correct this post for those who don’t read comments.