Schools

School District to Investigate Source of Leaked Attorney Letter

Letter motivated a frenzy as email carried it through the community.

The Three Village Central School District said Tuesday it intends to find out who leaked a letter discussing confidential contract negotiations which caused a frenzy as it circulated through the community via email and social networking sites over the past several days.

"We'll probably look into having a private investigator" depending on the cost of such a move, board president John Diviney said. "I think it got a lot of people wrongfully misled."

The letter, sent to the school board and central administration from the district's Farmingale-based attorney Gregory Guercio on April 5, was an attempt to steer the school board away from approving a memorandum of agreement with the Three Village Teachers Association. However, Diviney said it was based on a draft version of that agreement which had been significantly altered even before the letter was revealed to the community.

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Guercio declined to comment on Wednesday other than to confirm his correspondence with the district is "privileged and confidential and cannot be disclosed absent a vote" of the board.

The leak "may have come from a board member or central administration," Diviney said. He briefly addressed the incident at Tuesday night's board meeting shortly before the trustees actually approved the final version of the TVTA agreement, which the district reached Tuesday afternoon, with a 4-1 vote.

Find out what's happening in Three Villagewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

RELATED: Three Village School Board Adopts $174.6 Million Budget; Teachers Union Agrees to Concessions

The letter was sent to Patch via email by three different individuals between April 10 and April 12. One such message came from an email address with the local part "save3vcsd" and urged its readers – in all capital letters – to call the school board trustees and tell them to vote "no" on the agreement.

Some within the district have described the letter's initial distribution to the public as illegal. On Monday, trustee Jonathan Kornreich called it "a violation of attorney-client privilege and a violation of executive session confidentiality."

"It's disappointing because it creates mistrust," he said.


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