and one three one one number one seven one eight one seven j s at all versus the wesley school district of all good morning i'm mary and carol and i'm here on behalf of the westerly school department at westerly public schools i would also like to reserve three minutes for any rebuttal yes thank you you're out of this is a special this is a special education case that's now almost three years old and we started back in december of two thousand and fifteen with a request from the parents to frying their child eligible for special education and receive an i p and we're now here two and a half years later and the child does not have a nine p and yet we are being told that with the prevailing party and that is basically the issue that we are appealing today we do not believe that we are the prevailing party and let me explain why yes judge they're the previous we don't believe they're the prevailing party thank you your honor so this meeting started in two thousand and fifteen with a with a referral meeting at that meeting the parents requested that their child be found eligible the district had a meeting at which three lawyers were present two for the parents and one for the district after carefully considering the parents independent evaluations the district felt that what they were seeing in the classroom was different and they requested evaluations to be done by them the parents refused to allow the district to do  the district and the other hand trial who were familiar with the history and was unless you think it's important to contact the only reason i'm going over it is because the history is so convoluted in terms of going back and forth so then let me get right to the point your honor the reason we're here today is because the district does not believe that we are the prevailing party and we don't believe with the prevailing party because there's been no and has the other side prevail even though they prevailed wrongfully even what the judge ordered us to do would not make the parents the prevailing party because the parents requested that the to make the value make the decision the eligibility decision without being able there as your own right to ask for evaluations of your own and force you to do it depending on and then you did it and they didn't get eligibility so i guess the one thing they could change was they got the advantage of depriving you of your statutory right to hell of an evaluation that's correct and they did not get anything that they couldn't have gotten without the judge's order at any point in the two years between the time when we started this and we ended up in front of the district court the parents could ha any time asked for a meeting they could have asked the district to hold a meeting and according to the special education regulations we would have been required to do so the parents never asked for a meeting of the district even though this case went on for quite a lengthy period of time so even in what the judge ordered ordering us to have a meeting and to have a meeting without any the basis of us not having a valuations they could have had that anyway and of course i evaluations we felt that we have a statutory right to get those valuations having said that what the judge also in his order said was that if they weren't happy with that needing a then another due process hearing at the conclusion of that meeting when they did not get an i p they in turn filed for due process we actually got to the point where we were assigned a due process hearing officer we went to a pre hearing and after that pre hearing they withdrew their requests what's the status now under the statute of the could be revived  so they could then ask the new district to grant them and i pay and if they didn't get it they could turn around and go to due process but i would argue with that point westerly is no longer involved because the child no longer isn't our district  the parents asked the court to require i'm quoting now require an expedited hearing on the merits that will be based on the current available evidence meaning no further evaluations will be necessary  you is this is this order what they asked for didn't that change the legal relationship between the parties you know because again they were right from day one they were asking for ninety and as of today the only thing they ever had was what they already had which was the bible for thank you parents and the school district had had the least ten times and soon ten times the child was never determined to was in the westerly school department and as i said she moved out about maybe less than a year ago to another district judge how would you just address one of the things that you had asked you said didn't that paris get what they wanted when they asked for the appeal please keep in mind that the original due process hearing officer dismissed the case because the parents would not let us evaluate at that point when we responded to that at a regional appeal in front of the district court we tried to reject everything that was part of the just student or undisputed facts based on the facts based on the fact that those had never been introduced at  hearing because they had never been hearing on the merits of the outage ability so it is certainly is our position that the appeal has to go back to what they asked for in to process and in due process they asked for ninety and they never received