Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-05-01765/USCOURTS-ca8-05-01765-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

---

*

The Honorable Theodore McMillian died on January 18, 2006. This opinion

is being filed by the remaining judges of the panel pursuant to 8th Cir. Rule 47E. The

opinion is consistent with the views expressed by Judge McMillian at the conference

following the oral argument.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 05-1765

___________

T.F.; G.F.; S.F., a minor, by his mother *

and next friend, G.F., *

*

Plaintiffs - Appellants, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the

* Eastern District of Missouri.

Special School District of St. Louis *

County; Missouri Department of *

Elementary and Secondary Education, *

*

Defendants - Appellees. *

___________

Submitted: January 11, 2006

Filed: June 2, 2006

___________

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, McMILLIAN*

 and MELLOY, Circuit Judges.

___________

LOKEN, Chief Judge.

The parents of S.F., a student with educational disabilities, unilaterally placed

their son in out-of-state private residential schools after the Special School District

Appellate Case: 05-1765 Page: 1 Date Filed: 06/02/2006 Entry ID: 2051569
1

The HONORABLE CATHERINE D. PERRY, United States District Judge

for the Eastern District of Missouri.

-2-

of St. Louis (“the District”) refused to place S.F. in a full-time residential program.

The family commenced these proceedings seeking relief under the Individuals with

Disabilities in Education Act (“IDEA”), 20 U.S.C. §§ 1400 et seq., on the ground that

the District had denied S.F. a free appropriate public education. A Missouri hearing

panel and the district court1

 denied all relief. The family appeals the denial of their

claim for reimbursement of the out-of-state private school tuition. We review this

mixed question of law and fact de novo. Missouri Dep’t of Elem. & Secondary Educ.

v. Springfield R-12 Sch. Dist., 358 F.3d 992, 998 (8th Cir. 2004). But we must give

“due weight” to the outcome of the administrative proceedings and must be “careful

to avoid imposing [our] view of preferable educational methods upon the States.”

Board of Educ. v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176, 206-07 (1982). Applying this deferential

standard, we agree with the district court that the District provided S.F. a free

appropriate public education. We therefore affirm.

I. 

S.F. suffers from disabling psychological conditions that have been diagnosed

as including pervasive developmental disorder, oppositional defiant disorder,

obsessive compulsive disorder, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. His

educational assessments include language impaired, learning disabled in written

expression, and “educational autism.” S.F. attended local public schools through the

fourth grade, participating in mainstream classrooms and receiving several hours of

special education services per week under individualized education programs

(“IEPs”) developed by the District. Behavioral problems developed in the third grade

and continued in the fourth grade. Though his fourth grade teacher recommended

that S.F. move on to fifth grade, his parents instead enrolled him in the Churchill

School, a private school for children with learning disabilities. S.F. performed well

Appellate Case: 05-1765 Page: 2 Date Filed: 06/02/2006 Entry ID: 2051569
-3-

at Churchill in the fifth grade, but his behavior deteriorated in the sixth grade. His

parents then enrolled him at Metropolitan School, another private school for children

with learning disabilities. The parents did not use the IEP process in placing S.F. at

Churchill and then at Metropolitan. 

S.F. attended Metropolitan for seventh grade. His academic performance was

satisfactory but behavior problems persisted. Metropolitan told the parents that S.F.

should attend a different school for eighth grade but agreed he could attend

Metropolitan the first semester while the parents arranged a different placement. S.F.

was sent home or suspended for bad behavior so often during the first half of eighth

grade (the fall of 2001) that he was essentially home schooled. The parents withdrew

S.F. from Metropolitan at the end of that semester and sought services from the

District, which helped arrange an interim homebound instruction program for the

second half of eighth grade. At the end of that semester, S.F.'s special education

teachers said that he had progressed academically and was well-behaved.

In early 2002, the District completed a re-evaluation of S.F. and began

discussing an IEP for the upcoming ninth grade school year with his parents. The

parents argued that a full-time residential program was the only way S.F. could

receive a free appropriate public education. When the District disagreed, the parents

asked the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (“the

Department”) for a due process hearing. The District completed its proposed IEP on

May 27, 2002. The plan called for S.F. to spend fourteen hours per week in Project

Achieve at S.F.’s local public high school and twelve and a half hours at Epworth

Center, a nearby private facility, with an additional four hours of language therapy,

social work, and psychological counseling. 

Unhappy with the IEP, and convinced that S.F. needed a full-time residential

program, the parents enrolled S.F. at Pathways School, a private residential institution

in Pennsylvania. S.F. was at Pathways from June until November 2002, when the

Appellate Case: 05-1765 Page: 3 Date Filed: 06/02/2006 Entry ID: 2051569
2

The tuition at Chamberlain is $100,000 per year. 

-4-

school decided it was not a good fit because S.F. had not progressed and had negative

interactions with other students. The parents then enrolled S.F. in the Chamberlain

School, a private residential facility in Massachusetts. In February 2003, S.F. and his

parents amended their request for a due process hearing, seeking reimbursement for

tuition and other expenses at Churchill, Metropolitan, Pathways, and Chamberlain.2

After a hearing, the three-member administrative panel unanimously denied

relief. The panel first denied the claim for reimbursement of tuition at Churchill and

Metropolitan on the ground that the District was providing S.F. a free appropriate

public education when the parents withdrew him from public school after fourth

grade. The parents sought judicial review of that decision but abandoned this claim

in the district court. The panel then denied the claim for reimbursement of tuition at

Pathways and Chamberlain on the ground that the May 2002 IEP provided S.F. a free

appropriate public education. In reviewing this decision, the district court allowed

the parents to supplement the administrative record and granted the District’s motion

to join the Department as a defendant. See Springfield, 358 F.3d at 998, 1000-02.

The court then granted defendants' motion for summary judgment, giving “due

weight” to the findings of the educational experts on the administrative panel and

concluding that the May 2002 IEP was reasonably calculated to provide S.F. some

educational benefit. The family appeals that decision.

II.

The IDEA as amended in 1997 “does not require a local educational agency to

pay for the cost of education . . . at a private school or facility if that agency made a

free appropriate public education available to the child and the parents elected to

place the child in such private school or facility.” Jasa v. Millard Pub. Sch. Dist. No.

17, 206 F.3d 813, 815 (8th Cir. 2000), quoting 20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(10)(C)(i).

Appellate Case: 05-1765 Page: 4 Date Filed: 06/02/2006 Entry ID: 2051569
-5-

Therefore, parents who unilaterally “enroll their child in private school without the

approval of the public school district do so with the risk they will not receive

reimbursement for their costs.” Fort Zumwalt Sch. Dist. v. Clynes, 119 F.3d 607,

611-12 (8th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 523 U.S. 1137 (1998). 

A child receives a free appropriate public education if he receives

“personalized instruction with sufficient support services to permit the child to benefit

educationally from that instruction.” Rowley, 458 U.S. at 203. The IDEA requires

that public school districts offer eligible children “instruction and supportive services

reasonably calculated to provide some educational benefit.” Springfield, 358 F.3d

at 999 n.7. The statute also requires that students with disabilities be educated in the

“least restrictive environment,” 20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(5)(A), reflecting a “strong

preference” that disabled children attend regular classes with non-disabled children

and a presumption in favor of placement in the public schools. Independent Sch.

Dist. No. 283 v. S.D., 88 F.3d 556, 561 (8th Cir. 1996). “[C]hildren who can be

mainstreamed should be mainstreamed, if not for the entire day, then for part of the

day; similarly, children should be provided with an education close to their home, and

residential placements should be resorted to only if these attempts fail or are plainly

untenable.” Evans v. Dist. No. 17, 841 F.2d 824, 832 (8th Cir. 1988).

The focus of this appeal is whether the District’s May 2002 IEP offered S.F.

a free appropriate public education in the ninth grade. But the context is unusual.

S.F.’s parents unilaterally withdrew S.F. from the public schools four years earlier,

when they placed him at Churchill, a private school, for the fifth grade. The hearing

panel concluded that the District provided S.F. a free appropriate public education in

the fourth grade. That ruling is not challenged on appeal. Thereafter, the Churchill

and Metropolitan private schools could not deal with S.F.’s behavioral problems.

S.F.’s experiences at Churchill and Metropolitan led his parents to conclude that he

could only receive meaningful educational benefits through placement in a full-time

residential program. But the District and its IEP team were not part of this process.

Appellate Case: 05-1765 Page: 5 Date Filed: 06/02/2006 Entry ID: 2051569
-6-

Only when S.F. was in effect expelled from Metropolitan during eighth grade did the

parents turn for help to the District, which had always been willing to provide S.F.

placement in its public schools. The immediate result was an interim homebound

program in which, according to his special education teachers, S.F. advanced

academically and was well-behaved. 

Based on its re-evaluation and S.F.’s progress in the homebound program, the

District again proposed a public school IEP in May 2002. As the district court noted,

this IEP “offered S.F. a unique combination of services that he had not previously

experienced.” Project Achieve offered small classes to minimize S.F.’s problematic

interactions with other students and one-on-one instruction of the kind which helped

S.F. in the homebound program, supervised by a teacher experienced in educating

children with disabilities. The program included therapeutic elements not offered at

Churchill or Metropolitan and speech and language pathology instruction to help

S.F.’s written expression. Offering the program at S.F.’s local public high school

provided an opportunity to take mainstream classes if he progressed. The additional

program at Epworth offered small classes, staff experienced in dealing with children

with similar disabilities, and therapy programs designed to address S.F.’s educational

needs and behavioral problems. Epworth has treated many students with pervasive

developmental disorders, including educational autism. 

On appeal, the family argues that the May 2002 IEP was not sufficiently

tailored to S.F.’s unique needs because the District did not adequately research his

experiences at Churchill and Metropolitan and did not communicate with S.F.’s

mental health care providers in deciding not to offer a full-time residential program.

But this is not a case where all the experts “reached the conclusion that a residential

placement is necessary in order for [S.F.] to get an education.” Indep. Sch. Dist. No.

284 v. A.C., 258 F.3d 769, 777 (8th Cir. 2001). The District’s IEP team provided S.F.

a free appropriate public education through the fourth grade, were denied that

opportunity in the fifth through eighth grades, and then proposed a unique

Appellate Case: 05-1765 Page: 6 Date Filed: 06/02/2006 Entry ID: 2051569
-7-

combination of public school special education services for the ninth grade. The

experts on the administrative panel found that the IEP focused on S.F.’s individual

needs and provided him a free appropriate public education. We “must defer to the

judgment of education experts who craft and review a child's IEP so long as the child

receives some educational benefit and is educated alongside his non-disabled

classmates to the maximum extent possible.” Gill v. Columbia 93 Sch. Dist., 217

F.3d 1027, 1038 (8th Cir. 2000). 

S.F.’s parents rejected the IEP, concluding that only a full-time residential

placement would provide their son “meaningful” education benefit. But “IDEA

mandates individualized ‘appropriate’ education for disabled children, it does not

require a school district to provide a child with the specific educational placement

that [his] parents prefer.” Blackmon v. Springfield R-XII Sch. Dist., 198 F.3d 648,

658 (8th Cir. 1999). The May 2002 IEP offered unique services tailored to S.F.’s

needs. That may not have satisfied S.F.’s parents, but it satisfied the requirements of

IDEA. As we said in Evans, 841 F.3d at 832:

There was no guarantee that the programs proposed by Millard

[Public Schools] would have accommodated Christine. However, the

school district should have had the opportunity, and to an extent had the

duty, to try these less restrictive alternatives before recommending a

residential placement. 

The judgment of the district court is affirmed.

______________________________

Appellate Case: 05-1765 Page: 7 Date Filed: 06/02/2006 Entry ID: 2051569