By Linda Conner Lambeck
WESTPORT–As he often does, Schools Superintendent Thomas Scarice led off this week’s staff convocation with levity.
He showed a 3-minute video from Colin Mochrie in lieu of a high-priced keynote speaker. He shared security camera footage of his 10-year-old parked car being clipped by a school bus trying to maneuver in front of a snow-clogged school parking lot last winter. He still drives that car.
And he likened himself to the proverbial boy crying wolf over how dramatically Artificial Intelligence is changing the world.
“Well, the wolf is here,” Scarice told a Staples auditorium filled with staffers.
Not to be dramatic, but Scarice said the phase the district enters this school year is the hard part–the middle–where the old way still works but isn’t going to cut it if the district is to prepare Westport students for their future.
“The pain is in the middle,” Scarice told them.
As much as public schools hate change, Scarice said the district is well positioned to focus on the kids, more than the technology, as it works to harness the use of AI. Scarice sees it as an opportunity.
Groundwork
Much of the groundwork was laid when the district made AI part of its strategic plan in late 2024, Scarice said later Monday afternoon during an interview with Westport Journal.
A lot of time was spent in the last school year figuring out how the district was going to teach students–and staff–about AI and how to use it. A code of ethics that addresses academic integrity was established that went live on Tuesday, the first day of school, at the secondary level.
Students are to learn when to use AI and how to safeguard against AI bias and misinformation.
“I think we are really leading in that space right now,” Scarice said of the district’s AI approach.
And for all the attention AI is getting, Scarice said the district will remain committed to social and emotional learning and making sure students feel they belong.
Lessons in social and emotional learning are embedded at each grade level, primarily through the district’s embrace of the Responsive Classroom and No Place For Hate models.
In addition, the district will continue to increase student voices and leadership opportunities.
Every school has student leadership groups. The board has student representatives from Staples High School, to inform its thinking.
Does he still stand behind Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI, something that was talked about often as the district’s strategic plan was developed?
“I stand by all the belonging work we have done,” Scarice said. “I have stood by ‘sense of belonging’ from the beginning. If there is no belonging there is no learning.”
SEL work will be refreshed and presented to the board and community this year, Scarice said.
Facilities
With shovels in the ground for a new Long Lots School and a new sound and lighting system installed at Staples High school–on time and under budget, Scarice points out–the focus this year will be on initial studies for a Coleytown Elementary School redo.
Scarice said the Long Lots/Stepping Stones preschool project is on track to be completed in December 2027.
Although some redistricting occurred last year in anticipation of the Long Lots changes, Scarice said any talk of possibly redistricting the Kings Highway and Coleytown area is at least two years away.
The district is still on the hunt for an assistant director of facilities, a position finally approved last spring after three budget cycles.
So far, the district hasn’t found the right match, Scarice said.
“We cast a pretty big net (but) just didn’t find anyone that was at the standard we needed right now. We are still looking,” the superintendent said.
Special Ed
Request for proposals to conduct a review of the district’s special education program is due sometime in September. Ten firms expressed interest in bidding on the project.
When the proposals are in, they will go directly to the school board, which, at the public’s urging, will decide which one to hire.
Last year, parents unhappy with the district’s special education programs, asked repeatedly over the course of six months for an independent review to determine if identification happens fast enough, if appropriate educational supports are provided and if staff are properly trained.
Scarice said he stands by the district’s special education services, calling them incredible.
“We offer a ton,” he said. “We are well-staffed and well resourced. I think (the unhappiness) comes down to individual cases.”
Services students receive are dictated largely by highly-structured and regulated Planning and Placement Team meetings.
“There is no space in public schools where parents have greater autonomy or agency than in the process of special ed,” Scarice said. “When you disagree with the decisions of a PPT, we have to go through mediation (and) due process.”
Scarice said the district does the best it can to provide what is needed for the nearly 800 students receiving special education. Each school, he said, has two school psychologists as well as an assistant superintendent dedicated to special education. Over the past several years district special education programs have grown and expanded.
“I think we have very strong programs. I think our programs are absolutely comparable to other high performing districts,” Scarice said, adding “Nothing we do is perfect.”
If the review makes suggestions for improvement, Scarice said the district will address them.
Scarice also said that what the district spends on litigating challenged special education cases is completely in line with the region.
Budget
Last fall, Scarice warned that the days of 5 and 6 percent school budget increases were numbered. There may soon be a need for the district to prioritize its needs.
“It is not lost on me that this community is incredibly generous,” Scarice said. “We have well-resourced, well-funded schools.”
Those schools are human resource dependent. That comes at a cost as salaries and health care coverage rise.
“We may have to manage our expectations a little bit,” Scarice said.
Bending the curve will mean changes. Perhaps in class sizes, which are dictated by board policy. Another target may be the high school’s ample elective program that gives virtually every Staples student the classes they desire.
“We are going to have to have a conversation … from a value judgement perspective,” Scarice said. There will be tradeoffs.
Traffic & construction
Beyond the usual school bus adjustments as the new school year starts, Scarice said the district will keep an eye on the Long Lots area where construction vehicles, school buses and parents dropping off kids will be forced to share Hyde Lane.
He expects dismissal time to be a challenge.
“We will need a Staples approach to Long Lots” at dismissal time, Scarice said.
He credits the police department with getting tons of vehicles out of the high school in an efficient manner every day and hopes to do the same at Long Lots.
Linda Conner Lambeck
Linda Conner Lambeck covers education for Westport Journal. She was a reporter for more than four decades at the Connecticut Post and other Hearst publications. She has covered education throughout Fairfield and New Haven counties. She is a proud member of the Education Writers Association.
Special Education – Data Matters
●Westport Public Schools – highest legal expenses in our District Reference Group (New
Canaan, Darien, Weston, Wilton, Ridgefield, Easton, Redding)
●Westport Public Schools – Highest Achievement Gap (poorest performance metrics) in
our District Reference Group
●Westport Public Schools – Outplacement Tuition costs – under Tom Scarice – rising above
$6 million annually not including the over $1million in transportation costs.
●Petition for an Independent Review of Special Education – 1000+ signatures
Please watch the May 20, 2026, Special Education Community Conversation posted on the BOE website, with over 100 parents in attendance, as well as the June 18, 2026, BOE meeting to inform yourself of the issues facing many Special Education families.
Regarding special education, the superintendent is quoted saying “When you disagree with the decisions of a PPT, we have to go through mediation (and) due process.” My question: why is that necessary? Is it required by law? Does it reduce the potential liabilities for the department? People from within the system know the answer, but I don’t. In our case, both the town and us would have saved tens of thousands of dollars if instead of litigation we would have taken a transparent, honest and collaborative approach.
“I think [the unhappiness] comes down to individual cases,” Tom Scarice says. Um, yeah. Hundreds of them over the years. Hundreds of “individual” cases—kids who have and have not yet been identified as needing special services, and kids who never were.
“Individual cases” in Scarice-speak sounds like two or three. But it’s hundreds. When parents cite facts, Westport offers spin.
Dismissing the depth and breadth of parental concerns may make political sense, but it doesn’t make fiscal sense in the end.
Money is being wasted to deny a free appropriate public education to everyone; some students are falling multiple grade levels behind. Instead of funding paraprofessional training and an American Sign Language class—to cite just two easy, basic, good-faith fixes—Westport has thrown the dice and gambled that lawyers are ultimately cheaper than providing services. Courtrooms over classrooms? Really?
The dissatisfaction with special ed in Westport is not limited to a couple of parental princesses who slept on a pea. It’s a problem. It’s serious. And it needs aggressive solutions, not unhelpful responses.
Superintendent Scarice’s assertion that special education dissatisfaction is limited to a few “individual cases” is flatly contradicted by facts. When over 1,000 sign a petition for an independent audit, and Westport continues to rack up the highest special education legal expenses in our entire regional peer group (DRG A), this is a systemic crisis.
Worse, despite families sharing deeply concerning operational and safety gaps during the May 2026 community conversation and public Board of Education meetings—including untrained paraprofessionals who are working with severly disabled children, unaddressed reports of student bullying and self-harm ideation—district administration has seemingly failed to investigate or address these safety issues. Public testimony indicates that these unaddressed safety gaps span all levels of our public schools, from elementary and middle school up through the high school.
Furthermore, families have highlighted systemic operational failures, such as progress monitoring data not being provided to families in a timely fashion—often months after repeated requests—to back up assertions of goal and objective mastery in Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) for children receiving special education services. Instead of fixing staff training protocols, ensuring immediate safety compliance, and providing data transparency, the district defaults to costly, defensive litigation that drains millions from our tax base and destabilizes the general education environment for all students.
To protect taxpayers and restore classroom safety, the district-wide special education systems review must be structured properly. The school board must select a premier, independent national firm and mandate that its scope of evaluation explicitly includes these unaddressed administrative and safety failures, an audit of redacted legal invoices for patterns and ineffective use of outside counsel by the district, and a comprehensive survey of the numerous families who have left the district entirely.