Falcone on FOI Omission: 'We Apologize'

Darien Superintendent of Schools Stephen V. Falcone says the district apologizes for not including in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request a memorandum that has since become one of the key parts of an allegation that Darien isn't following federal education law.

"[W]e followed our normal process to provide information and overlooked this document for which we apologize," Falcone said in a statement emailed to Darien Patch.

But Falcone added that the school district wasn't hiding anything by not including the document. He wrote:

"It was a document that was widely distributed to administrators and teachers and there was no intent to withhold the information.

"In fact, in many meetings that we have had with parent groups this year, the general information from the document was shared and parents asked many questions in which ideas from the document were clarified."

Parents of Darien special education students have said a Nov. 6, 2012 memorandum about town special education policy was not included in a response to the FOI request in which it should have shown up.

The memorandum, from Special Education Director Deidre Osypuk, forms much of the basis for a formal complaint to the Connecticut Department of Education that Darien Public Schools aren't following federal education law.

The purported memorandum from Osypuk (included in the complaint document already published by Darien Patch) directs special education staff to meet together to form a "united front" before meeting with parents to work out Individual Education Programs for the parents' children. The complaint states that this violates education law and cites case law on that point.

Darien Patch has made it's own FOI request for the memorandum and is asking to see FOI requests in order to find the one to which the Nov. 6 memo was supposed to be sent in response.