Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-alsd-1_05-cv-00009/USCOURTS-alsd-1_05-cv-00009-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 20:1401 Education: Handicapped Child Act

---

1 At the inception of the briefing process, the Board filed a Motion to Permit

Enlargement of Brief (doc. 27), requesting leave to file a principal brief of up to 50 pages

because of the judicial review nature of these proceedings and the existence of a developed

record. In an Order (doc. 28) dated September 22, 2005, the Court questioned the validity of

these reasons for exceeding the ample, well-established page limits but granted the motion,

subject to several specific caveats. The undersigned was pleasantly surprised when the Board’s

counsel filed a 27-page Memorandum (doc. 30); however, such sentiments evaporated upon

review of appellant’s 32-page Suggested Determination of Facts and Conclusions of Law (doc.

30). Despite its innocuous title, this document in actuality is a separate brief containing little

overlap with its colleague. For example, the Board devotes 20 pages of the latter filing to facts

that are nowhere presented in the former document, and repeatedly cross-references sections of

one document from within the other, thereby stripping out critical detail, argument, analysis and

case citations from its Memorandum, presumably to foster an illusion that the Memorandum

satisfies the Local Rules and the undersigned’s instructions. Such a briefing strategy is

inappropriate for two reasons. First, it represents a transparent attempt to circumvent the

strictures of LR 7.1(b) and the principles outlined in September 22 Order. Second, it is

inefficient and unwieldy because it obligates the Court to read two interwoven documents in

tandem in order to glean the gist of the Board’s arguments. Far too often, the Board’s brief

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA

SOUTHERN DIVISION

ESCAMBIA COUNTY BOARD OF )

EDUCATION, )

 )

Appellant, )

 )

v. ) CIVIL ACTION 05-0009-WS-B

 )

JARRED BENTON, )

 )

Appellee. )

ORDER

This matter is before the Court on appellant Escambia County Board of Education’s

Motion for Summary Judgment or, in the alternative, Judgment on the Administrative Record

(doc. 29). Also pending is appellant’s Motion to Supplement (doc. 33) its filings by reference to

the recent Supreme Court decision in Schaffer ex rel. Schaffer v. Weast, --- U.S. ----, 126 S.Ct.

528 (Nov. 14, 2005). The Motions have been briefed and the appellant has also submitted the

administrative record, which consists of more than 1,200 pages of transcripts and exhibits.1

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 1 of 35
string-cites multiple paragraphs from the Suggested Determinations with no amplification or

explanation, leaving to the Court the responsibility of connecting the dots and speculating as to

how those paragraphs relate to the Board’s contentions. Had the undersigned been aware of

these defects earlier in the briefing process, it would have struck both filings and required the

Board to resubmit a single unified brief that rectifies these flaws. As it stands, however, the

Court in its discretion will accept the Board’s filings, rather than delaying resolution of these

proceedings by requiring rebriefing.

2 Hearing testimony reflected that autism spectrum disorder is a developmental

disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, and

is characterized by such behaviors as repetitive activities, stereotyped movements, resistence to

changes in environment or routines, and unusual responses to sensory experiences. (Hrg.

Transcript, at 630-31.) See County School Bd. of Henrico County, Virginia v. Z.P. ex rel. R.P.,

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I. Background.

A. Procedural Posture.

This action arises pursuant to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C.

§§ 1400 et seq. (the “IDEA”). The stated purpose of the IDEA is “to ensure that all children

with disabilities have available to them a free appropriate public education that emphasizes

special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs.” 20 U.S.C. §

1400(d)(1)(A); see also Cory D. ex rel. Diane D. v. Burke County School Dist., 285 F.3d 1294,

1298 (11th Cir. 2002); Walker County School Dist. v. Bennett ex rel. Bennett, 203 F.3d 1293,

1294 (11th Cir. 2000). To that end, the IDEA requires schools to assemble a team (including

educators and the child’s parents) to evaluate each child with a disability and to develop and

implement an individualized education program (“IEP”) specifying educational and

developmental goals for that student. See Ortega v. Bibb County School Dist., 397 F.3d 1321,

1324 (11th Cir. 2005). The IEP must be reviewed periodically, but no less frequently than

annually, by the IEP team to determine whether the student is achieving goals and whether

modification is necessary. See id. at 1325.

Appellee Jarred Benton (“Benton”) is a twelve-year old student who, at all relevant times

to these proceedings, attended W.S. Neal Elementary School, a facility within the school system

administered by the appellant, Escambia County Board of Education (the “Board”). The singular

issue animating this dispute is whether the Board has provided Benton, who has been diagnosed

with autism spectrum disorder,2 with a free, appropriate public education (“FAPE”) conforming

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 2 of 35
399 F.3d 298, 300 (4th Cir. 2005) (“Autism is a developmental disorder that affects a child's

ability to communicate, use imagination, and establish relationships with others. ...Children with

autism generally have significant deficits in language development, behavior, and social

interaction.”).

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to its obligations under the IDEA.

On March 11, 2004, Benton (by and through his mother, Lisa White) initiated

administrative proceedings by requesting an impartial due process hearing from the Alabama

Department of Education. Benton asserted that the Board had failed appropriately to evaluate

and identify him as a student with a disability, had failed to prepare an appropriate IEP, and had

failed to provide appropriately trained personnel to formulate and implement behavior

management strategies for him. In response to directives from the Hearing Officer to elaborate

on his claims, Benton delineated three dissatisfactions with the existing IEP, including: (a)

failure to address the escalating inappropriate, self-injurious and aggressive behaviors exhibited

by Benton in recent months; (b) failure to state strategies in a manner consistent with Benton’s

needs or with applicable state and federal law; and (c) failure to address Benton’s need for an

appropriate behavior intervention plan. The Board countered by a request for due process

hearing of its own, maintaining that Benton’s parents and counsel were obstructing its attempts

to implement educational services for Benton. All of these issues were joined in a single due

process hearing, conducted over the course of three days in the summer and fall of 2004 before

Hearing Officer Wesley Romine. 

B. The Administrative Decision.

On or about November 8, 2004, the Hearing Officer issued a 29-page Due Process

Decision (the “Administrative Decision”) largely (although not entirely) adverse to the Board. 

In that decision, the Hearing Officer noted that Benton has been receiving special education

services from the Board since 1997 and that Ms. White has participated in 11 IEPs for her son

with Board officials. However, none of the IEPs had a behavior management component,

notwithstanding Benton’s mother’s requests for same. She participated in the 2003-04 IEP for

Benton despite its omission of behavior plan provisions. Because of the pendency of the due

process hearing, Ms. White declined to attend a scheduled meeting with the IEP Team to

formulate an IEP for Benton for the 2004-05 school year.

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 3 of 35
3 During the hearing, the Board for the first time proffered different copies of those

IEPs for 2002-03 and 2003-04 that included dates of mastery of various designated benchmarks. 

The Hearing Officer excluded those documents from evidence because the Board had not timely

furnished them to Benton’s counsel, in accordance with the requirements of 20 U.S.C. §

1415(f)(2)(A)-(B). (Id. at 15-16 & n.2.) That evidentiary ruling is not appealed here.

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The Administrative Decision devoted substantial attention to the conduct of Benton

during the hearing itself. In particular, Benton’s behaviors included “flapping his arms,

repeatedly striking his chest and stomach with an open hand, making unintelligible noises,

clapping and pacing around the room.” (Administrative Decision, at 9.) He had numerous

inappropriate interactions with others in the hearing room, including pulling his lawyer’s hair,

kissing his expert on the cheek twice, touching/rubbing the Hearing Officer’s head, and grabbing

the shoulders of another lawyer. (Id.) Upon his removal from from the hearing room, Benton

struck himself and subsequently burst back into the room. (Id. at 9-10.)

The Board offered extensive testimony from Dr. Robert Simpson, an expert on autism,

that Benton did not require a functional behavior analysis or behavior intervention plan because

his behaviors were characteristic of autism, that he had observed no aggressive behavior from

Benton during a three-hour observation session, that any inappropriate behaviors by Benton were

successfully managed by school personnel, and that the school system appeared to be managing

Benton appropriately via one-on-one instruction in a predictable, structured environment. (Id. at

9-11, 13.) The expert attributed Benton’s disruptive conduct at the hearing to the effects of

being in a strange room with strange people, outside of a structured classroom environment, and

opined that Benton had displayed no signs of aggression. (Id. at 12.) However, Dr. Simpson

also acknowledged problems with the IEPs for Benton, such as absence of dates of mastery of

benchmarks, lack of any record of Benton’s progress and achievement, omission of measurable

annual goals, and failure to describe special education services with specificity. (Id. at 13-14.)3

The expert testified that the IEPs did represent a good faith effort on the part of the Board to

provide educational services to Benton, and that whatever mistakes may have been made did not

cause Benton’s education to suffer. (Id. at 14.) In light of his opinion that Benton was making

progress, the expert asserted that Ms. White’s refusal to allow an IEP for 2004-05 impeded the

Board from taking appropriate and required actions to supply special education services to

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 4 of 35
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Benton. (Id. at 15.)

The Board’s special education coordinator, Suzanne Barnett, testified at the hearing that

Benton had achieved success on many benchmarks in his IEPs, that those IEPs designated

appropriate strategies for Benton’s education, that Benton did not require a behavioral aide, and

that he was making adequate progress toward annual goals.

Upon consideration of this and other evidence, the Hearing Officer concluded that

Benton’s IEPs for 2002-03 and for 2003-04 were “improperly written and therefore violated

[Benton]’s right to a free appropriate public education.” (Administrative Decision, at 28.) He

further found that Benton’s right to a FAPE was compromised by the Board’s failure “to conduct

a functional behavior assessment and to draft and implement either an appropriate behavior

intervention plan or to revise [Benton]’s IEPs to address [his] autistic behavior.” (Id.) In

support of these determinations, the Hearing Officer reasoned that behavior assessments and

modification plans are important where a child demonstrates inappropriate or disruptive

behavior. Although acknowledging that the Board’s witnesses consistently expressed a view

that no behavior modification plan was necessary, the Hearing Officer reasoned that:

“the more compelling evidence was the behavior that the Petitioner demonstrated

when he appeared at the due process hearing. Although the school system’s

expert did not view that behavior as ‘aggressive,’ the Hearing Officer disagrees. 

Pulling hair, fondling heads, kissing and touching persons who are strangers ...

constitute ‘aggressive’ behavior in the view of the Hearing Officer. ... It is

disruptive behavior. It must be viewed as impeding the education (or activities)

of other persons. Similarly, Petitioner repeatedly struck himself. Such selfinjurious behavior also indicated a need for behavior interventions. The fact that

the behaviors demonstrated by the child are a manifestation of Petitioner’s autism

does not excuse a school system from providing behavior management techniques

either in the child’s IEP or in a separately formulated behavior intervention plan.

... Yet no significant efforts have been made in that direction by the school

system. That omission violated Petitioner’s right to a free appropriate public

education.”

(Administrative Decision, at 20-21.)

In addition to finding that the Board’s failure to implement behavioral assessment and

intervention plans violated Benton’s right to a FAPE, the Hearing Officer identified several other

defects in the IEPs for 2002-03 and for 2003-04 that, in his view, rendered them legally

inadequate. Specifically, the Hearing Officer sharply criticized the absence of notations as to

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 5 of 35
4 Although these are the salient determinations for purposes of the instant appeal,

the Hearing Officer also made the following findings: (a) that Benton’s claim of inadequate

training was meritless because the special education teacher assigned to Benton had specific

training in instruction of autistic children, such that “[a] school system can do little more than

what was done in this case to provide training for its teachers” (Id. at 24.); and (b) the Board

was not deprived of its due process rights when Benton’s mother invoked the “stay-put”

provisions of IDEA to maintain Benton’s current educational placement pending the due process

hearing. (Id. at 25.) No request for judicial review having been made to either of these

determinations, the undersigned will not revisit them.

5 In briefing the Board’s dispositive Motion, Benton maintains that this action fails

to state a claim upon which relief can be granted because the Board failed to file an appropriate

initial pleading. (Benton Brief, at 22-23.) Because the undersigned has construed the Notice of

Appeal as a complaint for purposes of this action, and because Benton did not interpose this

objection until some eight months after this action commenced, the Board’s appeal will not be

dismissed on that basis.

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whether Benton had mastered benchmarks (thereby rendering it impossible for Benton’s parents

and IEP team members to track his progress during the school year) and the vague

representations in the IEPs regarding Benton’s present level of performance (a standard against

which Benton’s annual goals were to be weighed and measured). (Administrative Decision, at

23.) Given the paucity of meaningful benchmark records or clear, measurable goals, the Hearing

Officer declared that the defective IEPs violated Benton’s right to a FAPE.

In short, then, the Hearing Officer concluded that, despite the school system’s good faith

effort to provide special education services to him, the Board had violated Benton’s right to a

FAPE under the IDEA by: (i) writing improper IEPs for the 2002-03 and 2003-04 school years,

including vague, unmeasurable goals and untracked benchmarks; and (ii) failing to conduct a

functional behavior assessment and either to implement an appropriate behavior intervention

plan or to revise Benton’s IEPs to address his autistic behavior. (Id.)

4

 The instant appeal

followed,5 with the Board delineating the following five assignments of error: (a) Benton failed

to give required notice of the facts of the alleged violations, and the Hearing Officer found

violations based on facts not alleged as violations by relying on events outside the record; (b) the

Hearing Officer improperly assigned the burden of proof to the Board; (c) the evidence did not

support a finding that the Board’s failure to implement a behavioral intervention plan for Benton

violated the IDEA; (d) the evidence showed that the Board had in fact maintained proper records

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 6 of 35
6 The Board casts its Motion as a Motion for Summary Judgment or, in the

Alternative, a Motion for Judgment on the Administrative Record. Such ambiguity is

understandable given the uncertainty as to the appropriate procedural mechanism for presenting

IDEA judicial review cases to a court for final disposition. See Loren ex rel. Fisher v. Atlanta

Independent School System, 349 F.3d 1309, 1313 (11th Cir. 2003) (pointing out that ordinary

Rule 56 principles have no application in IDEA cases, that summary judgment may be

appropriate in IDEA cases even with disputed facts based on a preponderance of the evidence,

and that district court decision is perhaps better characterized as judgment on the record);

Walker, 203 F.3d at 1297 (questioning proper mechanism, but declining to decide issue because

it was not squarely presented on appeal). The Court proceeds in recognition of these authorities. 

In the event that summary judgment or judgment on the administrative record is not appropriate,

the Court will conduct a bench trial to resolve disputed issues of fact that cannot be addressed

via pre-trial dispositive motions. See Loren, 349 F.3d at 1313, 1318.

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and progress reports pertaining to Benton’s annual goals, and his mastery of same; and (e) any

technical violations in Benton’s IEP are insufficient as a matter of law to deprive him of a FAPE. 

(Motion for Summary Judgment, at 1-3.)

II. Standard of Review.6

To effectuate the IDEA’s stated purpose of ensuring that children with disabilities are

afforded a FAPE that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their

unique needs, the statute requires public school systems to evaluate and identify children with

disabilities, and to develop an IEP for each such child. See Walker, 203 F.3d at 1294. If the

child’s parents are dissatisfied with the IEP, then they have the right to an impartial due process

hearing. See id. This is precisely what transpired here, as Benton’s mother requested and

received a due process hearing regarding her objections to Benton’s IEP late in the 2003-04

school year.

Under the IDEA, any party aggrieved by an administrative decision “shall have the right

to bring a civil action ... in any State court of competent jurisdiction or in a district court of the

United States without regard to the amount in controversy.” 20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(2)(A); see also

Ortega, 397 F.3d at 1325 (“A party not satisfied with the decision of the hearing officer may

bring a civil suit in federal district court.”). The Board, which is aggrieved by the Hearing

Officer’s determinations that it failed to provide Benton with a FAPE in several respects, did just

that. In such proceedings, this Court “shall receive the records of the administrative

proceedings; shall hear additional evidence at the request of a party; and basing its decision on

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 7 of 35
7 One strand of authority suggests that the degree of deference a district court

should extend to IDEA administrative determinations turns on whether a particular decision

implicates the agency’s educational expertise. See Loren, 349 F.3d at 1314 n.5 (“Courts owe

some judicial deference to local administrative agency judgments [in IDEA cases], though that’s

typically limited to matters calling upon educational expertise.”); McLaughlin v. Holt Public

Schools Bd. of Educ., 320 F.3d 663, 669 (6th Cir. 2003) (noting that administrative

determinations are due greater weight “on matters for which educational expertise is relevant”). 

Courts have also indicated that a greater measure of deference is warranted when a hearing

officer’s findings appear “thorough and careful,” as is unquestionably the case here, or where the

administrative findings turn on credibility determinations. Union School Dist. v. Smith, 15 F.3d

1519, 1524 (9th Cir. 1994); see generally R.D. ex rel. Kareem v. District of Columbia, 374 F.

Supp.2d 84, 89-90 (D.D.C. 2005) (“Where the Hearing Officer's findings are based on credibility

determinations of live witness testimony, as they were here, and there is no supplementation of

the record before the Court, particular deference is due to the Hearing Officer's decision.”).

8 To augment the schizophrenic quality of the caselaw articulating the appropriate

standard of review, the Eleventh Circuit has stressed that “the district court conducts an

entirely de novo review of the ALJ’s findings” in IDEA cases. K.C., 285 F.3d at 983. Such a

pronouncement may not be irreconcilable with principles of deference to educational expertise,

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the preponderance of the evidence, shall grant such relief as the court determines is appropriate.” 

20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(2)(B). The judicial review provision in the IDEA has been maligned as

“puzzling” and “somewhat confusing” because it deviates from the familiar “substantial

evidence” standard for review of administrative decisions. Walker, 203 F.3d at 1297. In the

IDEA context, an administrative decision “is entitled to due weight and the court must be careful

not to substitute its judgment” for that of the hearing officer. Id. That said, the decidedly

malleable and amorphous threshold is that “the extent of the deference to be given to the

administrative decision is left to the sound discretion of the district court which must consider

the administrative findings but is free to accept or reject them.” Id. at 1297-98; see also Doe v.

Alabama State Dep’t of Educ., 915 F.2d 651, 657 n.3 (11th Cir. 1990) (same).7

 Reviewing courts

are admonished to avoid imposing their view of preferable educational methods in particular

cases, especially given courts’ lack of the specialized knowledge and experience required to

resolve complex questions of educational policy. See JSK By and Through JK v. Hendry County

School Bd., 941 F.2d 1563, 1573 (11th Cir. 1991); Hartmann by Hartmann v. Loudoun County

Bd. of Educ., 118 F.3d 996, 1002 (4th Cir. 1997) (opining that “state proceedings must command

considerable deference in federal courts” in IDEA context).8

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 8 of 35
granting “due weight” to the administrative decision, and non-substitution of judgment for that

of the hearing officer, but it certainly does underscore the tension and ambiguities permeating

the appellate guidance on this point.

9 The Board’s Statement of Issues on Appeal (doc. 24) identified as one of its five

issues whether the Board’s due process rights were denied when Benton’s parents refused to

attend IEP meetings and when the Hearing Officer ordered the Board to refrain from

implementing a new IEP for Benton for the 2004-05 school year. This ground for appeal was

not mentioned in the Board’s summary judgment filings; therefore, it has been waived. 

See Road Sprinkler Fitters Local Union No. 669 v. Independent Sprinkler Corp., 10 F.3d 1563,

1568 (11th Cir. 1994) (holding that district court “could properly treat as abandoned a claim

alleged in the complaint but not even raised as a ground for summary judgment”); Coalition for

the Abolition of Marijuana Prohibition v. City of Atlanta, 219 F.3d 1301, 1326 (11th Cir. 2000)

(party’s failure to brief and argue issue before district court is ground for declaring it

abandoned); McMaster v. United States, 177 F.3d 936, 940-41 (11th Cir. 1999) (noting that a

claim may be considered abandoned when it is included in complaint, but plaintiff fails to argue

it to district court). This determination is grounded on the well-worn principle that “the onus is

upon the parties to formulate arguments.” Lyes v. City of Riviera Beach, Fla., 126 F.3d 1380,

1388 (11th Cir. 1997).

10 The Eleventh Circuit has frowned upon district court attempts to take shortcuts by

resolving IDEA claims based on a singular issue, while failing to address the remaining issues

presented for judicial review. See Loren, 349 F.3d at 1319 (explaining that while it understood

and did not criticize district court for trying to dispose of IDEA case on single narrow ground, on

remand district court must enter findings of fact and conclusions of law on each issue in the case

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III. Analysis of Issues Presented.

As mentioned supra, the Board contends that the Administrative Decision must be

overturned for five distinct reasons, to-wit: (a) Benton furnished the Board with insufficient

notice of the alleged violations, and the Hearing Officer found violations based on events outside

the record; (b) the Hearing Officer improperly placed the burden of proof on the Board; (c) the

evidence did not support the finding that the Board’s failure to implement a behavioral

intervention plan for Benton violated the IDEA; (d) the evidence showed that the Board had in

fact kept proper records and reports pertaining to Benton’s goals, and his mastery of same; and

(e) any technical violations in Benton’s IEPs are legally insufficient to deprive him of a FAPE. 

(Motion for Summary Judgment, at 1-3.)9

 To ensure a comprehensive judicial determination for

appellate purposes and to minimize inefficiencies on appeal, the Court will address each of these

legal issues.10

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 9 of 35
and make alternative rulings, “[g]iven the complexity of the issues and in an effort to avoid

piecemeal appeals”). The Court takes this directive to heart here, despite the somewhat

laborious nature of the process of parsing through each of the Board’s five grounds for review.

11 The Board postures this alleged error as a denial of due process rights. It is

unclear whether the Board invokes “due process” as a constitutional defect or simply a statutory

one. However, the Board offers no authority and no meaningful analysis showing that the alleged

deprivation is one of constitutional magnitude. At most, defendant cites the unpublished

decision in Beckwith v. Bellsouth Telecommunications Inc., 2005 WL 2012667 (11th Cir. Aug.

22, 2005), in support of the proposition that “[d]ue process ... requires that claims against a

defendant be specified with clarity and precision.” (Suggested Determinations, at 22.) This

argument is incorrect. First, Beckwith had nothing to do with due process, but rather involved

straightforward application of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Moreover, Beckwith can

have no relevance to the Benton due process hearing because those proceedings were not

governed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Aside from its unpersuasive reliance on

Beckwith, the Board’s arguments hinge on the statutory notice provisions of the IDEA; therefore,

the Court’s discussion of the issue will follow suit.

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A. Adequacy of Notice and Extra-Record Evidence.

As its first assignment of error, the Board contends that Benton failed to give notice

before the due process hearing of the manner in which he contended the IEPs were faulty, and

that the Hearing Officer compounded the deficiency by finding IDEA violations that Benton had

never alleged as violations and relying on events outside the record.11 In his initial request for

due process hearing dated March 11, 2004, Benton alleged that the school system had violated

the IDEA by failing to “provide an [IEP] that complies with the [IDEA] and the laws and

regulations promulgated thereto.” (Hrg. Officer Exh. 1.) On May 27, 2004, the Hearing Officer

directed Benton’s counsel to apprise the Board “about what is inadequate about the present

educational plan for the child.” (Hrg. Officer Exh. 4.) Benton’s counsel complied via letter

dated June 4, 2004, in which he contended the IEP was inadequate because it (a) failed to

address Benton’s escalating inappropriate behaviors, (b) “does not state strategies in a manner

consistent with Petitioner’s nature and needs, and further, the strategies that are included in the

[IEP] are inconsistent with” the law in unspecified ways, and (c) failed to address an appropriate

behavior intervention plan. (Hrg. Officer Exh. 7.) Therefore, as of early June 2004, the Board

was unequivocally on notice that Benton intended to litigate the behavioral aspect of the IEPs, as

well as defects in certain IEP “strategies.” There is no indication that the Board sought further

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 10 of 35
12 The Board hypothesizes (without support) that the Hearing Officer’s findings

against it on these points were motivated by animus arising from the Board’s conceded failure to

furnish complete copies of Benton’s educational records to Benton’s lawyer for inspection and

copying prior to the hearing, as well as the Hearing Officer’s belief that the Board had tampered

with and altered those records after the fact. (Board Memorandum, at 9-14.) The Board also

devotes nearly six pages of its principal Memorandum to explaining its failure to provide the

records to Benton’s counsel. This document production issue has tangential relevance, if that, to

the legal questions presented for judicial review. The Board has not disputed the Hearing

Officer’s finding that the omitted records were inadmissible; therefore, it is unclear why the

Board offers a lengthy narrative attempting to exonerate and excuse its failure to produce the

requisite documents in a timely manner.

13 The Board’s filings also make much of Benton’s failure to identify which IEPs

were objected to prior to the hearing (Reply Brief, at 1-2) and his contention at the hearing that

every IEP for six years was defective (Memorandum, at 7). However, the Board undercuts its

own objection on this score by referencing the Hearing Officer’s ruling that no challenges to

Benton’s IEPs predating March 2002 would be allowed, thereby vastly narrowing the potential

universe of claims presented. (Suggested Determinations, at 11-12.) It is inconceivable that the

Board would suffer prejudice from Benton’s complaints about six years’ worth of IEPs, when the

Hearing Officer permitted him to raise arguments only with respect to the most recent two IEPs. 

Besides, any concerns the Board may have had to the temporal reach of the due process hearing

could have been addressed in advance of the hearing. There is no indication that the Board

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clarification, through either formal or informal means, of the sufficiency of Benton’s June 4

explanation of its IEP-related dissatisfactions prior to the hearing, particularly as to the

“strategies” challenged by Benton’s counsel.

At the due process hearing, Benton put on evidence, and the Hearing Officer concluded,

that the IEPs violated the IDEA because they lacked notations showing dates of mastery of

stated benchmarks (such that Benton’s parents and teachers could not monitor his progress) and

because the IEPs suffered from vagueness and measurability problems as to Benton’s annual

goals.12 The Board protests that it was not given notice that these alleged violations would be at

issue in the due process hearing, such that the hearing effectively metamorphosed into a trial by

ambush. The Board’s position is that because the lack of behavioral assessments/plans was the

only IEP defect specifically enumerated by Benton prior to the hearing, Benton should have been

barred from objecting to (and the Hearing Officer should have been barred from finding IDEA

violations as to) any other aspect of the IEP. (Suggested Determinations, at 14-16; Board

Memorandum, at 7-8, 11.)13

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 11 of 35
sought to do so.

14 To be sure, the Board cites Combs v. School Bd. of Rockingham County, 15 F.3d

357, 363-64 (4th Cir. 1994) on this point. In Combs, the court affirmed the denial of a student’s

request for attorney’s fees where the student’s mother requested a due process hearing without

identifying her concerns to school officials in advance. The Fourth Circuit stated that “Combs is

free to resort to administrative and judicial action” in these circumstances, but that he cannot

recover fees “when his efforts contributed nothing to the final resolution of a problem that could

have been achieved without resort to administrative or legal process.” Id. at 364. Hence, far

from finding that the student gave legally insufficient notice to be entitled to present its claims at

the due process hearing, the Fourth Circuit panel appeared perfectly comfortable with

authorizing the student to proceed in such fashion. The only limit the Combs court imposed was

that a student could not obtain attorney’s fees if he did not provide specific advance notice to the

school system before activating the administrative process. Thus, Combs cannot reasonably be

read as supporting the draconian, exhaustive interpretation of § 1415(b)(7)(B)(ii) that the Board

urges this Court to adopt.

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Language in the statute lends superficial support to the Board’s position. In particular,

the IDEA requires parents invoking the due process hearing mechanism to provide notice to the

educational agency including, without limitation, “a description of the nature of the problem of

the child relating to such proposed initiation or change, including facts relating to such

problem.” 20 U.S.C. § 1415(b)(7)(B)(ii) (emphasis added). But the statute does not specify that

all facts relating to the parents’ dissatisfaction must be spelled out in the notice, much less that

every legal theory must be set forth in painstaking detail at that time to avoid waiver. Such a

burdensome, unwieldy standard would far exceed that to which federal court plaintiffs are held,

and seems antithetical to the more nimble, less rule-intensive character of administrative

proceedings. The Board has come forward with no court authorities reading this section so

expansively, and the Court’s own research has disclosed none.14 To the contrary, in the only

published federal decision citing § 1415(b)(7)(B)(ii) the Supreme Court recently observed that

Congress has legislated IDEA due process hearing procedures by “impos[ing] minimal pleading

standards.” Schaffer ex rel. Schaffer v. Weast, --- U.S. ----, 126 S.Ct. 528, 532 (2005); see also

Sammons v Polk County School Bd., 2005 WL 2850076, *4 (M.D. Fla. Oct. 28, 2005) (finding

that § 1415(b)(7)(B) does not require claimant to identify a specific IEP relating to the alleged

problem). Such a “minimal pleading standards” construction of the relevant statutory language

is irreconcilable with the Board’s demand for exacting, all-inclusive cataloguing of all legal

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 12 of 35
15 The Board complains that the omission of more detailed notice is particularly

egregious in this case because of the paucity of discovery tools at the administrative level. Be

that as it may, the Board’s attorneys certainly could have contacted Benton’s lawyers informally

to request additional information as to Benton’s specific concerns with the IEPs in advance of

the hearing. Alternatively, the Board could have petitioned the Hearing Officer to require such

further clarification. It does not appear that the Board took either step to educate itself as to

Benton’s IEP-related objections.

16 Contrary to the Board’s asserted position here, it was not left to guess as to the

nature of the alleged violations. The IDEA lists seven required components of IEPs (an eighth

did not apply to Benton because of his age), including (i) a statement of the child’s present levels

of educational performance; (ii) a statement of measurable annual goals, including benchmarks

or short-term objectives; (iii) a statement of special education services to be provided; (iv) an

explanation of the extent to which the child will not participate with nondisabled children in

class activities; (v) a statement of any necessary modifications in state or districtwide student

achievement assessment; (vi) the expected dates, frequency, location, and duration of special

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theories and facts that Benton intended to invoke at the administrative hearing. The Court

cannot concur with the Board that the IDEA obligated Benton to plead with specificity every

legal theory and fact underlying his claims in advance of the hearing. Thus, the Court readily

finds that the notice furnished by Benton neither subverted the procedural requirements of the

IDEA, nor otherwise impaired the Board’s due process rights.

Leaving aside the legal infirmity in the Board’s position, this assignment of error suffers

from a logical defect, as well. There is no doubt that the Board knew Benton intended to litigate

the sufficiency of the IEPs at the administrative hearing. Moreover, the Board was squarely on

notice as of the June 4 clarification that Benton believed the IEPs were inadequate because of

their lack of a behavioral component, and because they did “not state strategies in a manner

consistent with Petitioner’s nature and needs.” The Board may have assumed that these

unspecified “strategies” problems were connected to the behavioral issues, but apparently never

sought to verify that assumption. Indeed, it appears that the Board never followed up with the

Hearing Officer or Benton’s counsel prior to the hearing to seek elucidation of Benton’s

dissatisfactions.15 A reasonably prudent litigant in the Board’s position would have known from

the “strategies” statement that all aspects of the IEPs were subject to attack, and would have

taken care to compare those IEPs to the discrete statutory requirements outlined in §

1414(d)(1)(A) in advance of the hearing.16 Such an approach would have enabled the Board to

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 13 of 35
education services to be provided; and (vii) a statement of how the child’s progress toward

annual goals will be measured and how parents will be informed of their child’s progress. By

comparing this statutory checklist to the IEPs, the Board could easily have predicted and parried

Benton’s arguments and evidence that elements (i), (ii) and (vii) were not satisfied here.

17 As the Hearing Officer put it when the Board’s counsel objected during the

hearing that benchmark mastery issues were not properly part of the case, “it is absurd to me that

you all are coming in here and acting like you all did not know that that was an issue at this Due

Process.” (Hrg. Transcript, at 315.) Further, the Hearing Officer pointed out, Benton’s notice

“says, failing to draft an appropriate Individual Education Plan. That puts the whole IEP at

issue.” (Id. at 317.)

18 When the Board’s counsel objected on notice grounds during the hearing, the

Hearing Officer rejected this argument pursuant to the same reasoning. Indeed, the Hearing

Officer correctly noted, “You have Suzanne Barnett, your expert. You have your special ed

teacher, who I can consider an expert. You’ve got your expert that you employed. You all can

sit down and look at those IEPs and tell whether they are defective or not. Now, that’s not

surprise. ... All [Benton] has to do is say, this is an inappropriately written IEP. And that’s what

-14-

anticipate and defend against any attacks Benton might mount to the validity of the IEPs. 

Simply put, the Board’s “due process” objection to the notice received is unpersuasive because

the Board knew that Benton felt that the IEPs were deficient, there is a finite set of statutory

requirements for such IEPs, and the Board could have lined up Benton’s most recent IEPs with

each of the § 1414 requirements to see where problems might arise. That the Board may have

elected not to do so cannot constitute a due process violation warranting reversal of the

Administrative Decision.17

Finally, even if the Board’s position that Benton should have provided further detail held

legal and logical allure, there is no suggestion that the Board incurred prejudice as a result of this

bit of secrecy. To the contrary, the Board concedes that when opposing counsel raised specific

questions about the sufficiency of the IEP during the hearing, the Board countered “by having its

witnesses testify additionally on issues raised by opposing counsel’s questions.” (Board

Memorandum, at 8.) The Board does not assert that it would have presented additional

witnesses or other evidence had it known of the specific aspects of the IEPs with which Benton

found fault. To the contrary, it appears that the Board had exactly the witnesses and documents

it required at the hearing to marshal rebuttal evidence and arguments against any aspect of the

IEPs that Benton might call into question.18 It also appears that the Board in fact marshaled and

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 14 of 35
he did.” (Hrg. Transcript, at 529-30.)

19 In a single paragraph in its Memorandum, the Board also protests that certain of

the Hearing Officer’s findings regarding Benton’s conduct in the hearing room (specifically, his

alleged pulling of counsel’s hair, his alleged grabbing of counsel’s shoulders, and his struggling

-15-

presented this very rebuttal evidence, so there was no conceivable prejudice to the Board. Under

the circumstances, it strains the concept of due process past the breaking point to suggest that the

Board is entitled to reversal of the Administrative Decision because it did not receive a detailed

breakdown of alleged legal infirmities in the IEPs in advance of the hearing.

As a last-ditch effort to buttress its position on the notice issue, the Board complains that

the consequences of the Administrative Decision, if allowed to stand, will be nothing short of

disastrous because it will expose school systems to endless permutations of IEP attacks that they

cannot adequately foresee and defend against without drastic increases in cost and duration of

due process hearings. (Reply Brief, at 14.) Such a “parade of horribles” is not realistically a

concern on the facts presented here. Notwithstanding the existence of 11 IEPs for Benton, the

Hearing Officer applied a two-year statute of limitations to Benton’s objections, thereby

confining the ambit of the hearing to the 2002-03 and 2003-04 IEPs. The Board cannot credibly

assert that, confronted with an allegation that the IEPs were defective, it was unduly burdensome

for the Board to compare the contents of those two IEPs with the finite, specific statutory

requirements for same in preparation for the hearing. This is particularly true given the Board’s

ready access to a phalanx of IDEA specialists, including Dr. Simpson, special education

coordinators and teachers, and the Board’s retained counsel. Moreover, the Board failed to avail

itself of available mechanisms to seek further clarification of the nature of Benton’s objections to

the IEPs in advance of the hearing, but instead made an unwarranted assumption that his

dissatisfactions were confined to behavioral issues. To a large extent, the Board is the author of

its own misfortune. In any event, the Court cannot and does not find that the notice provided by

Benton compromised the Board’s due process rights or otherwise jeopardized the integrity of the

administrative process, so as to warrant reversal of the Administrative Decision.

For the foregoing reasons, the Board’s notice objection to the Administrative Decision is

overruled.19

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 15 of 35
with female relatives upon being removed from the room) were not recorded in the official

transcript. (Memorandum, at 20.) The Board argues that the evidence of these behaviors is

“expressly unsupported” by witness testimony (Suggested Determinations, at 9), and urges the

Court to reverse based on the Hearing Officer’s citation to non-record evidence. This argument

fails for four reasons. First, the testimony in question does not negate that such behaviors

occurred, as the witness merely testified, “I don’t remember that happening, to tell you the

truth.” (Hearing Transcript, at 410.) That same witness elaborated that “I didn’t really notice

whether he did [those things] or not, because I was paying attention to the hearing.” (Id. at 424.) 

Certainly, nothing in the cited testimony contradicts the Hearing Officer’s findings. Second, the

Board has failed to proffer affidavit testimony from persons in the hearing room to rebut those

findings, although such supplementation likely would have been permissible. See generally

School Board of Collier County, Fla. v. K.C., 285 F.3d 977, 981 (11th Cir. 2002) (discussing

supplemental evidence standard). Third, the Court is aware of no legal principle that would

forbid a hearing officer from making findings of fact based on nonverbal conduct that he

personally observes during an administrative hearing, regardless of whether the court reporter

formally records same in the official transcript. Neither the parties’ filings nor the Court’s

research discloses any analogue in IDEA cases to the “sit and squirm” prohibition in the Social

Security context. See, e.g., McRoberts v. Bowen, 841 F.2d 1077, 1081 (11th Cir. 1988). Fourth,

in light of the lengthy laundry list of Benton’s inappropriate behaviors identified by the Hearing

Officer, there is no reason to believe that the exclusion of these few items would have made any

meaningful difference in the end result.

20 The Schaffer decision was handed down on November 14, 2005, three weeks after

the close of briefing in this matter. The Board immediately filed a Motion to Supplement (doc.

33) to incorporate Schaffer into its legal arguments. Benton opposed the Motion to Supplement,

not on the ground that supplementation would be unfair or improper, but rather on the theory that

Schaffer does not apply. That Schaffer may be distinguishable is not a valid reason to forbid the

Board from citing to it. Therefore, that Motion is granted, and Schaffer will be considered in

-16-

B. Burden of Proof.

Next, the Board balks that the Hearing Officer allegedly applied an improper burden of

proof at the administrative hearing. According to the Board, the Hearing Officer did not require

Benton to present any evidence on the behavioral issue, but instead obligated the Board to bear

the burden of establishing the correctness of its exclusion of a behavioral plan from the subject

IEPs. (Board Memorandum, at 22-24.)

The Eleventh Circuit and, more recently, the Supreme Court have ascribed to a default

rule that when a parent challenges the propriety of an IEP, the parent bears the burden of proving

its inadequacy. See Schaffer, 126 S.Ct. at 537 (“The burden of proof in an administrative

hearing challenging an IEP is properly placed upon the party seeking relief.”);20 Devine v. Indian

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 16 of 35
this Court’s review of the Administrative Decision. That said, however, the undersigned

recognizes and will consider Benton’s position that Schaffer is irrelevant to the burden of proof

issue as postured here.

21 Benton quotes Alabama Administrative Code § 290-8-9-.08(8)(c)(6)(i)(1) as

obligating a school district to “assume the burden of proof regarding the appropriateness of

services proposed or provided.” (Opposition Brief, at 8.) But the Board quotes § 290-8-9-

.08(8)(c) as reading that the burden “to prove their allegations” rests on the “party filing the

hearing request.” (Reply Brief, at 4.) Surely, only one of these mutually inconsistent passages

can be correct.

-17-

River County School Bd., 249 F.3d 1289, 1292 (11th Cir. 2001) (“because it is the parents who

are seeking to attack a program they once deemed appropriate, the burden rests on the parents in

this IEP challenge”).

Two potential flaws to the Board’s objection are evident. First, the Court must consider

whether the Schaffer default rule is applicable to the specific circumstances presented in this

case. Second, if so, the Court must ask the more fundamental questions of whether the Hearing

Officer actually did fasten that burden of proof to the Board and whether any erroneous

allocation of that burden made a difference in the final analysis.

Benton protests that Schaffer is confined on its face to a default rule in circumstances

where no state rule purports to shift the burden to the school district. According to Benton,

Alabama has just such a burden-shifting regulation; therefore, he contends, Schaffer is

inapposite. Indeed, the Schaffer majority recognized that several states (including Alabama)

have laws or regulations affixing the burden in IEP challenges directly on the school district. 

Schaffer stopped short of deciding whether its default rule must give way in the presence of a

state provision to the contrary, reasoning that “[b]ecause no such law or regulation exists in

Maryland, we need not decide this issue today.” 126 S.Ct. at 537. The Board does not posit that

the Schaffer rule would override any Alabama law or regulation to the contrary; therefore, the

Court will not sua sponte raise that argument. Instead, the Board’s stance on this point is

confined to an assertion that Alabama law is in harmony with Schaffer because it places the

burden of proof on the party making the hearing request. (Reply Brief, at 4.) Amazingly, the

Board relies on the same Alabama regulation that Benton cites for a diametrically opposite

proposition.21 In that regard, the Board contends that Alabama Administrative Code § 290-8-9-

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 17 of 35
22 To date, these developments have not reached the computerized legal research

services frequented by the Court; however, their veracity is confirmed at the Alabama

Department of Education’s official webpage, www.alsde.edu.

-18-

.08(8)(c) imposes the burden of proof on the party filing the hearing request, but Benton argues

that the regulation places the burden on the Board. Neither side offers assistance in solving this

paradox by explaining what exactly is going on with § 290-8-9-.08(8)(c). However, the Court’s

research reveals two illuminating facts. First, prior to July 1, 2005, the language relied upon by

Benton was found in § 290-8-9-.08(8)(c), and that quoted by the Board was not. Second,

effective July 1, 2005, the Alabama Department of Education amended the regulation,

eliminating the burden of proof language on which Benton relies and adopting that quoted by the

Board.22

In addition to failing to explain their divergent citations to the same regulatory provision,

the parties neglect to address the temporal significance of these two iterations of the regulation. 

To the extent that the Board asks this Court to ascribe error to the Hearing Officer’s failure to

adhere to an amended regulation that did not take effect until nearly eight months after the

Administrative Decision was issued, that argument must fail. The Hearing Officer cannot be

faulted for adhering to the burden of proof scheme set forth in the Alabama regulations at the

time of the due process hearing, and for failing to predict and preemptively apply the amendment

altering that framework more than half a year ahead of time. The Board proffers no argument or

authority whatsoever to support the proposition that the Hearing Officer’s November 2004 ruling

must be reviewed through the prism of the post-July 1, 2005 version of the regulation. Nor does

the Board suggest that such a regulation was intended to have retroactive effect, or that it is

legally applicable to cases on judicial review as of its effective date. Once again, the Court

declines to consider arguments that the Board has not articulated.

Thus, this action falls outside the ambit of Schaffer and Devine because at the time of the

Administrative Decision, Alabama had a regulation that specifically imposed the burden of proof

on school districts when parents called into question the propriety of an IEP. The Board has

failed to offer any argument for the proposition that the Devine / Schaffer default rule takes

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 18 of 35
23 At most, the Board merely points out that federal statutes such as the

Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and Title VII allocate the burden of

persuasion to the plaintiff. (Reply Brief, at 4-5.) But, as Justice Stevens ably noted in his

concurrence in Schaffer, “[i]t is common ground that no single principle or rule solves all cases

by setting forth a general test for ascertaining the incidence of proof burdens when both a statute

and its legislative history are silent on the question.” Schaffer, 126 S.Ct. at 537 (Stevens, J.,

concurring). There could be circumstances when “the purpose of a statute is best effectuated by

placing the burden of persuasion on the defendant.” Id. That other federal statutes may have

been construed as allocating the burden of proof to a plaintiff is not, in and of itself, a basis for

declaring that IDEA must assign burdens in like fashion.

24 Even if the Board were correct that the burden of proof should have resided with

Benton, there has been no showing that the Administrative Decision hinged on the allocation of

that burden of proof. Nowhere did the Administrative Decision specify that the burden rested

with the Board, nor did it state that the ruling in Benton’s favor was a product of the Board’s

failure to satisfy any such burden. Simply put, there is no reason to believe that shifting the

burden of proof from the Board to Benton would have made any difference in the Hearing

Officer’s conclusions regarding behavioral plans. The Board’s argument to the contrary

proceeds from a faulty premise that “the Appellee never attempted to support his allegation” that

a behavioral plan was necessary and “fail[ed] to present any evidence on the behavioral issue.” 

(Board Memorandum, at 23.) In point of fact, Benton presented ample evidence, including the

testimony of Benton’s mother and the demonstrative evidence of Benton’s conduct in the hearing

room, in support of his position that a behavioral intervention was necessary. For example,

Benton’s mother testified that Benton “scratches his self, bites his self,” “hits real hard,” and

kicks people. (Hearing Transcript, at 39-40.) Benton himself engaged in an array of behaviors

(clapping, pacing, repeatedly striking himself in the chest area, rubbing the Hearing Officer’s

head, hugging and grabbing strangers in the room, etc.) that might tend to support Benton’s

position that a functional behavior assessment and behavior intervention plan were warranted. 

Other evidence, discussed infra, supported a finding that Benton’s inappropriate behaviors

carried over to the classroom setting. Thus, it is simply not accurate for the Board to maintain

that there was no evidence to support Benton’s position on the behavioral issue.

-19-

precedence over the then-conflicting Alabama regulation;23 therefore, the Court will not sua

sponte meander into such a thorny thicket to make the Board’s arguments for it. The burden of

proof properly rested on the Board, and it was not error of the Hearing Officer to conduct the

hearing in that manner.24 The Board’s assignment of error on this point is overruled.

C. Behavior Intervention Plan Issue.

Third, the Board challenges the Hearing Officer’s finding that Benton’s right to a FAPE

was infringed by the school system’s failure to undertake appropriate behavior management

techniques. The Board’s argument on this point is twofold. First, it asserts that the record

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 19 of 35
25 A case cited by the Board adds a thoughtful, well-crafted caveat to this general

proposition, by recognizing that “as a practical matter ... clear lines can rarely be drawn between

the student’s educational needs and his social problems at home. Thus, typically an IEP in cases

where student’s disability is this serious ... must address such problems in some fashion.” 

Gonzalez v. Puerto Rico Dep’t of Educ., 254 F.3d 350, 353 (1st Cir. 2001). The Gonzalez court

affirmed the district court’s finding that the IEP must address the significance of the child’s

behavioral problems at home by including “further services and training for Gabriel’s parents

designed to help them manage Gabriel’s behavior at home.” Id. Thus, far from erecting an

absolute barrier separating inappropriate home behaviors from school behaviors, Gonzalez

recognizes the symbiotic, interrelated connection between the two, and the obvious possibility

that inappropriate behaviors at home may carry over into the educational context and interfere

with a child’s right to a FAPE unless managed via an IEP.

-20-

contains no evidence that Benton’s behavior at school interfered with his education, or that such

behavioral problems manifested themselves anywhere other than in his home environment

purportedly “exacerbated by a turbulent family relationship.” (Board Memorandum, at 21.) 

Second, it maintains that the Hearing Officer “wrongly substituted his own personal observation

and judgment for that of the IEP Team and a highly qualified autism and special education

expert.” (Id. at 22.) Careful examination of the record reveals no error on either front.

The Board struggles mightily to distinguish Benton’s clearly inappropriate behavior in

the hearing room from his conduct in an educational environment. (Board Memorandum, at 21-

22; Suggested Determinations, at 4, 9-10; Reply Brief, at 6-7.) In so arguing, the Board

correctly notes that the IDEA is focused on provision of a FAPE to disabled children, and is not

designed to ameliorate inappropriate behaviors beyond the school environment. See Devine, 249

F.3d at 1293 (explaining that IDEA requires only “measurable and adequate gains in the

classroom,” not in the home); JSK, 941 F.2d at 1573 (similar).25 But the Board overlooks

substantial record evidence that the types of behaviors exhibited by Benton in the hearing room

(e.g., striking his chest, clapping his hands, pacing, touching strangers inappropriately) were not

anomalous, but are symptomatic of his behavior in other settings, including the classroom. For

example, a “Classroom Consultation” report prepared by Glenwood Inc. and dated August 27,

2002 references “challenging behaviors” by Benton in the school environment, states that “Jared

[sic] will need to develop control of his behavior,” and stresses the “importan[ce] that Jarred

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 20 of 35
26 Although the specifics of Benton’s challenging behaviors at school are not

outlined in the Glenwood report, that document raises a strong inference of aggressive behaviors

by advising, for example, that Benton should be told “‘hands down’ rather than ‘don’t hit.’” 

(Id.) Thus, the Glenwood report is persuasive evidence that Benton was engaged in

inappropriate and aggressive behaviors in the school setting during the relevant time period.

27 Dr. Simpson testified that he could not recall whether he witnessed Benton

engaged in other ritualistic behaviors during that observation period because his notes were

silent in that regard. (Id. at 219.)

28 Dr. Simpson confirmed as much when he testified to his understanding that there

had been incidents of aggression by Benton at school, albeit infrequent ones. (Id. at 370.)

-21-

learns to control his emotions and behavior.” (Bd. Exh. 31.)26 When Dr. Simpson spent three

hours observing Benton in a classroom on May 10, 2004, he saw Benton “doing that flapping

thing on his stomach” (e.g., repeatedly striking himself in the stomach or thoracic region), which

Dr. Simpson otherwise described as “ritualistic” “chest thumping, stomach thumping,” just as

Benton had done in the hearing room. (Hrg. Transcript, at 219, 369.)27 Although his notes

specify that he “observed no aggressive behavior by Jarred” during the observation period, Dr.

Simpson also reported that Benton’s teacher informed him “that Jarred is typically not

aggressive at school” (id. at 226), with the modifier suggesting that there are occasions when he

is aggressive at school.28 Dr. Simpson also allowed that “with the syndrome of Autism, we

assume we’re going to see autistic behaviors” (id. at 238), and never stated that such an

assumption was not borne out in Benton’s case. Benton’s mother, Ms. White, testified that on

the brief occasions when she has gone to his classroom, she has observed her son engaging in

self-stimulatory behaviors such as pacing around the room. (Id. at 35.) Benton’s teacher for the

2002-03 and 2003-04 school years, Terrance Dunaway, testified that Benton did engage in

behaviors associated with autism, and acknowledged his self-striking, chest-beating repetitive

conduct. (Id. at 642-45.) Ms. Dunaway intimated, however, the school system’s apparent

philosophy that those autistic behaviors should simply be accepted rather than confronted with a

behavioral intervention. (Id. at 645-46.)

The Board would have the Court ignore this evidence of Benton’s inappropriate

behaviors. As an initial matter, the Board argues that the contents of the IEPs are dispositive as

to Benton’s behavior in the classroom. (Board Memorandum, at 21; Reply Brief, at 5-6.) The

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 21 of 35
29 The face of the IEPs makes clear that Ms. White’s signature has no deeper

significance than to confirm that she “attended and participated in the meeting to develop this

IEP.” (Bd. Exh. 9, 10.) Her signature does not purport to announce her concurrence with the

terms of the IEP, or her lack of objections to same.

30 In light of Ms. White’s testimony in this regard and based upon a close reading of

her testimony in its entirety, the Board’s characterizations that she “agreed that his behaviors did

not impede his education” (Reply Brief, at 9) and that she “supported the IEP team’s decision

not to specify a behavioral plan” (Suggested Determinations, at 29) are unfair and misleading. 

The same applies to the Board’s overstated claim that the Hearing Officer’s ruling substituted his

judgment for that of Benton’s mother. (Board Memorandum, at 23.) It did no such thing, given

the clear evidence that Ms. White had been troubled by the absence of behavioral aspects to the

IEP for years. By all accounts, Ms. White’s unhappiness over the lack of a behavioral plan was

-22-

2003-04 IEP, which Ms. White signed, reflects that “[t]his student exhibits no chronic behaviors

that impede his/her learning or the learning of others.” (Bd. Exh. 10.) The 2002-03 IEP includes

a similar determination. Furthermore, both IEPs state that “a behavior plan is not needed.” (Bd.

Exh. 9, 10.) Because the IEP team, including Benton’s mother, agreed that no behavioral

intervention was needed, the Board maintains, the Hearing Officer could not properly have

concluded otherwise. (Suggested Determinations, at 4-5.) A more searching examination of the

hearing record reveals the flaws in such a position. At the hearing, Ms. White testified that she

signed both IEPs and that she understood them. (Hrg. Transcript, at 75-7, 79.) But Benton’s

mother further indicated that while she signed the 2003-04 IEP, she did not agree with it because

“[w]e’ve discussed his behavior for the past couple of years. It’s not a day-to-day behavior. I[t]

doesn’t happen every day.” (Id. at 82.) In fact, she testified, “I may have signed it, but I didn’t

agree with that,” referring to the conclusion that no behavioral plan was needed. (Id.) Ms.

White explained that by signing the IEPs, she did not intend to signify her acquiescence to the

IEPs. In her words, “I wasn’t meaning to do anything. I just signed that I was there.” (Id. at

125.)29 Ms. White felt that behavioral intervention was necessary because Benton’s behaviors

were “getting worse” when he became “really, really frustrated” and “self inflicting” in his

“aggression.” (Id. at 118-19.) Benton’s mother indicated that she had reported his home

behavior issues to school officials, but that no one from the school had directed her to any

resources for assistance. (Id. at 82-83.) She said that notwithstanding her signature on the IEPs,

she wanted those IEPs to include behavior intervention plans. (Id. at 111-12.)30 Her position

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 22 of 35
one of the forces (if not the principal force) animating this litigation. The Board’s suggestion

otherwise is groundless.

31 Reinforcing this conclusion, the Hearing Officer’s findings regarding the

necessity of behavior assessment and intervention for Benton merit deference because they

specifically implicate his educational expertise and relate directly to his own personal

observations of Benton and his credibility findings with respect to Ms. White and the Board’s

witnesses, including Dr. Simpson and Ms. Dunaway.

-23-

that she was dissatisfied with the IEPs on behavioral issues was bolstered by the testimony of

Benton’s teacher, Ms. Dunaway, that Ms. White had contacted her in October 2002 inquiring

about behavior management and its omission from Benton’s IEP. (Id. at 687-90.) Clearly,

notwithstanding the text of the IEPs and her signature on same, Benton’s mother had ongoing

concerns about the lack of a behavioral component to the IEPs. It was not error for the Hearing

Officer to determine that self-serving IEP findings that no behavioral intervention was necessary

were not reflective of Benton’s mother’s wishes and were outweighed by other record evidence

to the contrary, as outlined above.31

As an alternative argument, the Board maintained throughout the hearing process and in

the IEPs that because Benton’s classroom behaviors are a natural outgrowth or byproduct of his

autism, no behavioral plan was needed. For example, the IEPs developed for Benton in 2002-03

and 2003-04 state in conclusory terms that “Jared’s [sic] behaviors are directly related to Autism

and therefore a behavior plan is not needed.” (Bd. Exh. 9, 10.) It is not clear whether the Board

would advance a similar contention in these proceedings.

To the extent that the Board does adopt that tack, the undersigned concurs with the

Hearing Officer that “[t]he fact that the behaviors demonstrated by the child are a manifestation

of Petitioner’s autism does not excuse a school system from providing behavior management

techniques either in the child’s IEP or in a separately formulated behavior intervention plan.” 

(Administrative Decision, at 21.) Despite some equivocation, the Board’s own expert, Dr.

Robert Simpson, testified that a child’s autistic status does not per se render a functional

behavior assessment and behavior intervention plan inappropriate, and sometimes there is a

purpose to conducting behavior analysis for autistic children. (Hrg. Transcript, at 142, 405,

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 23 of 35
32 In that regard, Dr. Simpson expressed discomfort with the stated rationale in the

IEPs for not providing Benton with a behavior plan, explaining that the documents would have

been better “if there had been some comment in there that says, since he has not demonstrated

significantly aggressive or harmful behaviors to self, others, or the environment, and since his

behaviors are those that are typical of children with Autism, a behavior plan is not needed. That

would have made it much better.” (Id. at 457.)

33 Remarkably, the Board also takes the position that “the evidence was contrary to

the hearing officer’s finding that the child had inappropriate behavior in the hearing room.” 

(Suggested Determinations, at 29.) Such an argument is both unreasonable and untenable, and is

apparently based on (a) a misguided view that any nonverbal conduct during the hearing that the

court reporter did not note in the official transcript cannot be considered, and (b) a hopelessly

strained interpretation of Dr. Simpson’s testimony that, while he did observe certain

inappropriate behaviors by Benton in the hearing room, there were other behaviors that the

expert “didn’t really notice” because he was not “paying attention” to them. (Hrg. Transcript, at

423-24.) The evidence unequivocally supports the Hearing Officer’s findings that Benton

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426.)32 While autism has no known cure, Dr. Simpson explained, it is generally possible to

shape, improve and mitigate its behavioral side effects through the educational process. (Id. at

447-48.) Thus, the touchstone of the analysis as to whether a behavior plan is necessary is not

the type of disability the child has; rather, the propriety of those instruments turns on “whether or

not there are significantly inappropriate behaviors for which we do not understand their cause.” 

(Id. at 405.) “[G]ood professional practice dictates that you determine interventions based on the

unique needs of each child,” rather than categorically stating (as the IEPs did) that no behavioral

intervention is needed because the behaviors in question arise from autism. (Id. at 199.) See

generally Loren F. ex rel. Fisher v. Atlanta Independent School System, 349 F.3d 1309, 1312 n.1

(11th Cir. 2003) (explaining that IEP must provide “an education that is specifically designed to

meet the child's unique needs”). Likewise, Ms. Dunaway acknowledged that any IEP for Benton

should be designed specifically for him. (Id. at 632-33.) Thus, extensive evidence at the due

process hearing refutes the school system’s convoluted and demonstratively flawed rationale that

no behavior plan was warranted because the behaviors at issue related to Benton’s disability.

Finally, the Board asks the Court to overturn the portion of the Administrative Decision

concerning behavioral intervention because the Hearing Officer purportedly “substituted his own

personal observation and judgment for that of the IEP Team and a highly qualified autism and

special education expert.” (Board Memorandum, at 22.)33 Without question, “[l]ocal educators

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 24 of 35
engaged in inappropriate behaviors in the hearing room. For the Board to assert otherwise is

folly.

34 The authorities that the Board string-cites on page 24 of the Suggested

Determinations in support of the “substituting judgment” argument direct cautionary language at

courts, not at hearing officers. See Fort Zumwalt School Dist. v. Clynes, 119 F.3d 607, 610 (8th

Cir. 1997) (“courts are not to substitute their own notions of sound educational policy for those

of the school authorities which they review”); Hartmann, 118 F.3d at 1000-01 (“Administrative

findings in an IDEA case are entitled to be considered prima facie correct, and the district court,

if it is not going to follow them, is required to explain why it does not.”); Mrs. B. v. Milford Bd.

of Educ., 103 F.3d 1114, 1121 (2nd Cir. 1997) (“A court may not second-guess state educators'

policy decisions in the effort to maximize a handicapped child's educational potential.”); Union,

15 F.3d at 1524 (“We also accord deference to the policy decisions of a school district when it is

acting within the bounds of federal and state law.”); Todd D. by Robert D. v. Andrews, 933 F.2d

1576, 1581 (11th Cir. 1991) (“the district court must pay great deference to the educators who

develop the IEP”). None of these decisions compel a hearing officer to treat an educator-drafted

IEP with kid gloves. Far from supporting the Board’s position, these authorities, read

collectively, spell out a compelling admonition to this Court not to overturn blithely the Hearing

Officer’s decision, which is precisely what the Board requests. The Board in one breath accuses

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deserve latitude in determining the individualized education program most appropriate for a

disabled child,” and neither this Court nor any other is or should be in the business of making

educational policy. Hartmann, 118 F.3d at 1001. But the term “substituting judgment” is a

loaded, pliable phrase that is too easily manipulated to fit any desired outcome. To accept the

Board’s argument at face value would be to find that hearing officers wrongly substitute their

judgment for that of school system educators whenever they deem an educator-designed IEP

improper or inadequate in some way. That is not the law. See, e.g., County School Bd. of

Henrico County, Virginia v. Z.P. ex rel. R.P., 399 F.3d 298, 307 (4th Cir. 2005) (“the fact-finder

is not required to conclude that an IEP is appropriate simply because a teacher or other

professional testifies that the IEP is appropriate”).

Likewise, the Board’s argument would seem to compel a conclusion that a hearing

officer wrongly substitutes his judgment for that of a school system’s expert witness whenever

he reaches conclusions contrary to those of the expert. Whatever the term “substituting

judgment” means (and the Court does not know because it is not developed to any meaningful

degree in the case law cited by the Board), it plainly does not prohibit the Hearing Officer from

finding that the Board’s expert testimony should not be credited.34 The Court is of the opinion

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 25 of 35
the Hearing Officer of substituting judgment, then in the next urges this Court to substitute its

judgment for the Hearing Officer on matters lying within that Hearing Officer’s core

competencies. See, e.g., R.D., 374 F. Supp.2d at 89 (noting that a district court may not

substitute its own views for those of the hearing officer in the IDEA context). For these reasons,

the “substituting judgment” line of argument is not particularly illuminating or helpful here.

35 This last point is significant. The school system drafted the IEPs in such a

manner that they implicitly acknowledge the existence of inappropriate behaviors by Benton,

then declare such behaviors unworthy of intervention because of their link to his disability. Such

reasoning is both factually and legally unsatisfying, and lends support to the Administrative

Decision.

36 To say that the Hearing Officer did not err on this point is not necessarily to

endorse his reasoning. This aspect of the Administrative Decision rests almost exclusively on

the Hearing Officer’s observations of Benton in the hearing room. (Administrative Decision, at

20-21.) In the undersigned’s view, this rationale is too narrow. At a minimum, the Hearing

Officer should have explained why those hearing-room behaviors were germane to Benton’s

FAPE. This connection may properly be supported in at least the following two respects: (1) the

substantial record evidence that Benton was engaging in inappropriate behaviors in the school

environment, as well, and (2) the practical link between Benton’s in-school behavior and his athome behavior, such that the two were interrelated and failings in one could reasonably expect to

yield deterioration in the other. The record absolutely supported (1), even if no testimony

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that the Hearing Officer’s finding that the Board violated Benton’s right to a FAPE by failing to

furnish him with a behavioral assessment and behavioral intervention plan is entitled to

deference, is supported by the greater weight of the evidence in the administrative record, does

not violate any “agreement” by Ms. White, and does not constitute improper second-guessing of

the decisions made by school officials in the relevant IEPs. The Hearing Officer was not obliged

to accept Dr. Simpson’s expert opinion that no behavioral intervention was warranted, when

considerable other evidence (as described supra) counseled otherwise. Likewise, any deference

due the Board’s decision not to include a behavioral component to Benton’s IEPs is substantially

outweighed by the plainly faulty reasoning (e.g., that no behavioral component was necessary

simply because Benton’s behaviors were the product of his autism) articulated in the relevant

IEPs to support that decision.35

For all of these reasons, the Board’s assignment of error to the Hearing Officer’s

conclusion that Benton’s IDEA rights were violated by the Board’s failure to furnish him with a

behavioral assessment and behavioral intervention plan is overruled.

36

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regarding (2) was elicited during the hearing.

37 The fifth ground also complains that the Hearing Officer “based his decision on

allegations never made.” (Motion, ¶ 5.) This contention is plainly redundant of the Board’s first

stated ground for relief relating to violations predicated on uncharged conduct. Having already

tilled this soil once, supra, the undersigned declines to re-plow it at this juncture.

38 On August 8, 2005, Magistrate Judge Bivins entered a Rule 16(b) Scheduling

Order (doc. 23) directing the Board to file, on or before August 22, 2005, “a statement of issues,

which shall set forth in detail, the issues to be resolved.” (Scheduling Order, ¶ 1.) Because the

Motion’s fifth ground was not identified in the Board’s Statement of Issues and because the

Board has offered no justification for that omission, it cannot properly be injected into the

litigation for the first time in the context of a dispositive motion.

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D. Records/Reports Pertaining to Achievement of Annual Goals.

1. Status of Fourth and Fifth Grounds for Relief.

The Board’s remaining two grounds for relief from the Administrative Decision, as

identified in its Motion to Dismiss, are unrelated to the behavioral assessment/intervention issue. 

Instead, they arise from an array of technical defects that the Hearing Officer found in Benton’s

IEPs, relating to mastery dates of benchmarks and adequacy of annual goals. The Board’s fourth

stated ground asserts that the Hearing Officer improperly concluded that these defects were so

severe as to render the IEPs unable to confer an educational benefit on Benton. (Motion, ¶ 4.) 

Its fifth stated ground posits that “any technical violations in a student’s educational plan do not

deprive the student of a FAPE so long as the Appellant has provided the disabled student with a

basic floor of opportunity that affords some educational benefit.” (Id., ¶ 5.)37 There are several

glaring problems with this proposed formulation of the issues. As an initial matter, it is unclear

how (if at all) the fourth and fifth grounds are analytically distinct, as each appears to articulate

the same concepts, albeit in slightly different terms. Moreover, the fifth ground was not

identified in those terms in the Board’s Statement of Issues on Appeal; thus, to the extent that it

does constitute an independent basis for relief, this issue has not been joined in a timely and

proper manner in compliance with the Orders of this Court.38 The Board offers neither excuse

nor explanation for the omission of this ground from the Statement of Issues. Finally, the

Board’s Memorandum and Reply Brief neglect to brief the fifth ground at all, or at least to brief

it in a form that is distinguishable from the fourth ground. The Court will not speculate what the

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 27 of 35
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Board might have intended to argue with the fifth ground presented in the Motion to Dismiss,

where the Board has failed to provide any elaboration of the cursory verbiage presented in the

Motion itself.

In light of these considerations, the fifth ground for relief identified in the Motion to

Dismiss is overruled as redundant of the fourth ground, not properly preserved in this action as

a distinct objection to the Administrative Decision, and unsupported by the Board’s memoranda

of law. To the extent that the fifth ground merely reiterates or rephrases the fourth ground for

relief, its merits will be considered below.

2. Whether the Procedural Violations of IDEA Constitute Denial of FAPE.

The Administrative Decision identifies several non-behavioral aspects of the 2002-03 and

2003-04 IEPs that are contrary to the IDEA. These defects include lack of notations as to

whether Benton had mastered any of his benchmarks, vagueness as to Benton’s present level of

performance, and lack of measurable annual goals. According to the Hearing Officer, the

mastery dates shortcoming was “[t]he most glaring deficiency” in the IEPs, and was significant

because the absence of dates of mastery prevented parents or other IEP team members from

ascertaining Benton’s progress during the school year. (Administrative Decision, at 23.) 

Meanwhile, the present performance level was deemed important because it was the barometer

by which his progress in annual goals (for example, the Hearing Officer construed one goal as

calling for Benton to demonstrate “eighty percent accuracy of his present level of performance”)

would be measured. (Id.) Without a clear exposition of Benton’s present level of performance,

these annual goals defined by reference to present performance levels are unmoored, untethered

and meaningless. And the Hearing Officer deemed the “annual goals” section of the IEP flawed

because it did not identify measurable goals, but cryptically referred to an 80% accuracy

objective, without delineating “what the Petitioner was to attain eighty percent accuracy in.” 

(Id.)

The hearing testimony of Dr. Simpson reinforced the Administrative Decision that these

aspects of the IEPs were wanting. Dr. Simpson acknowledged that the purpose of an IEP is to

provide a written record of the child’s present level of performance, measurable annual goals,

strategies to achieve such goals, intermediate benchmarks to be achieved along the way, and

whether satisfactory progress in meeting such goals was actually achieved. (Id. at 201-02.) 

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 28 of 35
39 As noted supra, the Board proffered different copies of the IEPs at the due

process hearing that actually did include mastery dates. These IEPs were materially different

from the iterations furnished to Benton’s counsel in advance of the hearing. This issue was

litigated extensively during the due process hearing, and the Board put on testimony that the

discrepancy was the result of an oversight in compiling Benton’s records for his counsel, rather

than the product of any nefarious intent. The Hearing Officer disagreed, finding “based on the

totality of the evidence that the dates of mastery were not included on those IEPs until after the

Petitioner’s attorney examined the records at the local education offices on June 4, 2004. In

other words, the IEPs were altered.” (Administrative Decision, at 27 (emphasis added).) The

Hearing Officer excluded the modified IEPs from evidence because they were not provided to

Benton’s counsel at least five business days before the hearing, as required by the IDEA. 

(Administrative Decision, at 15 n.2; Hrg. Transcript, at 312-15, 471, 476-79.) Although the

Board is clearly unhappy with the Hearing Officer’s findings in that regard and devotes

considerable space to its innocent explanation for what transpired, the Board has not appealed

those evidentiary rulings; therefore, the Court need not and will not revisit them here. The

Administrative Decision also notes that even if the altered IEPs were allowed, the dates of

mastery are demonstrably deficient because the listed dates for each task were the same. All

were pegged to the end of the school year, in contravention of the periodic, contemporaneous

mastery dates contemplated by the IDEA and in frustration of any attempt to monitor

chronological progression of benchmark mastery during the school year. (Administrative

Decision, at 16, 27.) The Board has not challenged this finding, either.

40 For example, a goal under which Benton was to demonstrate increased math

readiness skills by performing with 80% accuracy when given tasks on instructional level was

problematic, in Dr. Simpson’s eyes, because of the vagueness in “instructional level” as it relates

to present level of performance. (Id. at 190-91.) Furthermore, the term “increased math

readiness skills” was unsatisfactory because it is not measurable, according to Dr. Simpson. (Id.

at 192-93.) Dr. Simpson found similar flaws in terms of measurability and present performance

level with an annual goal that the student will increase his use of words to communicate. (Id. at

196.) Those goals were listed in Benton’s 2002-03 IEP. (Bd. Exh. 9.)

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Notwithstanding these objectives, Dr. Simpson agreed that Benton’s IEPs for 2002-03 and 2003-

04 lacked any record of dates of mastery. (Id. at 252-54, 256, 318, 414-15.)39 Dates of mastery,

Dr. Simpson concurred, are important to trace a child’s progress over the years, and should be

recorded on IEPs. (Id. at 202-03.) Furthermore, certain of the 80% accuracy annual goals on

Benton’s IEPs he criticized as vague and “not as good as I would like [them] to be in terms of

specifying the performance.” (Id. at 190.)40 More generally, he admitted that he “would say no”

if asked whether Benton’s IEPs were technically precise. (Id. at 380.) Despite these flaws, Dr.

Simpson testified that to his knowledge Benton’s education had not suffered because of any

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41 The Board insists that the appropriate legal standard is that if procedural

violations of IDEA are found, the Court must examine “whether a preponderance of the record

evidence shows that those procedural violations actually caused substantive harm to Jarred

Benton in his education.” (Memorandum, at 3.) Although the Board cites several authorities for

this proposition, none of them invokes this “actually cause substantive harm” standard. That

said, certain courts have adopted such a test. See Knable ex rel. Knable v. Bexley City School

Dist., 238 F.3d 755, 764 (6th Cir. 2001) (IDEA relief is appropriate upon findings of procedural

violations only where such violations have caused substantive harm to child or his parents); see

generally E.D. ex rel. Dukes v. Enterprise City Bd. of Educ., 273 F. Supp.2d 1252, 1260 (M.D.

Ala. 2003) (in IDEA cases, procedural violations do not entitle plaintiff to relief unless they

harmed the student).

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imperfections in the IEPs, such that those deficiencies have no practical significance. (Id. at

380-81.)

Under the IDEA, an IEP must include “a statement of measurable annual goals, including

benchmarks or short-term objectives,” related to meeting the child’s educational needs resulting

from his disability. 20 U.S.C. § 1414(d)(1)(A)(ii). The Board’s expert agreed that the absence

of dates of mastery and the vagueness and measurability problems in the annual goals rendered

Benton’s IEPs technically noncompliant. However, he also testified that the issue of whether the

IEPs were technically pristine was “dwarfed” in his view by the question of whether the school

system was “making a good-faith effort to do everything they know to do to provide an

appropriate education for the child.” (Hrg. Transcript, at 377.) Dr. Simpson opined that the

Board was putting forward such a good-faith effort, irrespective of any arcane glitches in the

paperwork. (Id.) The Board adopts this stance in its Motion. Rather than taking the

unsustainable position that its IEPs were beyond reproach, the Board falls back on the principle

that procedural defects, without educational consequences, are insufficient to violate a child’s

right to a FAPE. Indeed, in analyzing whether a FAPE was provided in cases arising under the

IDEA, courts must determine: “(1) whether the state actor has complied with the procedures set

forth in the IDEA, and (2) whether the IEP developed pursuant to the IDEA is reasonably

calculated to enable the child to receive educational benefit.” School Bd. of Collier County, Fla.

v. K.C., 285 F.3d 977, 982 (11th Cir. 2002). “A procedurally defective IEP does not

automatically entitle a party to relief.” Id. Courts assess the impact of the procedural defect,

rather than simply the existence of the defect itself. Id.41 In a similar vein, the law is clear that

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 30 of 35
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technical perfection is not the objective of the statute. After all, “[t]he state is not required ... to

maximize the handicapped child’s potential; rather, the state must provide the child a ‘basic floor

of opportunity,’ consisting of access to specialized instruction and related services.” Doe, 915

F.2d at 665; see also Devine, 249 F.3d at 1292 (“a student is only entitled to some educational

benefit; the benefit need not be maximized to be adequate”); JSK, 941 F.2d at 1572-73 (“when

measuring whether a handicapped child has received educational benefits from an IEP and

related instructions and services, courts must only determine whether the child has received the

basic floor of opportunity”). The types of IEP procedural defects that have been held to violate a

child’s right to a FAPE are those that “result in the loss of educational opportunity,” “seriously

infringe upon the parents’ opportunity to participate in the IEP formulation process,” or “cause[]

a deprivation of educational benefits.” A.I. ex rel. Iapalucci v. District of Columbia, --- F.

Supp.2d ----, 2005 WL 3274479, *9 (D.D.C. Sept. 19, 2005).

 Thus, the Board correctly posits that the IDEA does not mandate an IEP to be all that it

can possibly be. Instead, the FAPE requirement is satisfied so long as the IEP provides a “basic

floor of opportunity.” Simply put, then, the Board’s position is that whatever infirmities

Benton’s 2002-03 and 2003-04 IEPs might have had, they do not matter because there is no

evidence that Benton’s education was adversely affected. But the Hearing Officer plainly found

adverse impacts on Benton. Where dates of mastery are either excluded from IEPs or jotted in as

a pro forma afterthought at year’s end, the IEP team “cannot determine the progress that the

child has been making during the school year” towards achieving annual goals and whether

adjustments to the program might be necessary. (Administrative Decision, at 23.) Likewise, the

Hearing Officer opined that in the absence of meaningful, measurable goals and objectives, there

can be no “appropriate and meaningful education and developmental interventions for a child

with autistic spectrum disorder.” (Id. at 24.) Because these observations and findings go

directly to the Hearing Officer’s special expertise in educational matters and because such

determinations are clear, well-developed, well-reasoned and well-supported, the undersigned

finds that they are entitled to deference.

In response, the Board would minimize and marginalize these acknowledged blemishes

in the IEPs to the point where they are utterly inconsequential. But a reasoned analysis reflects

that these were no trivial, trifling technicalities; to the contrary, the defects in Benton’s IEP went

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42 The Board objects that record evidence shows that progress reports were sent

home to Benton’s mother periodically. (See Board Exh. 87; Hrg. Transcript, at 536.) But these

reports were mere single-digit numerical assessments of Benton’s progress towards achieving

annual goals, with no indication of whether he had successfully negotiated any of the

benchmarks, or stepping stones, along the way. It is the failure to maintain records showing

dates of mastery of benchmarks, not any defect in progress reporting of annual goals, to which

the Hearing Officer’s findings applied. Besides, not a single one of the four annual goals listed

in the “Progress Report” was listed as having been achieved during the 2003-04 school year. 

(Board Exh. 87.) All of them included ratings of “[a]dequate progress being made toward goal,”

but did not show whether any interim steps had been satisfied. (Id.) A global statement that

progress toward big-picture goals is being made is a poor pedagogical and evaluative substitute,

indeed, for any indication as to whether and, if so, when definable, measurable stepping stones

have been achieved.

43 Cf. Iapalucci, 2005 WL 3274479, at *10 (observing that omission of certain

required information from IEPs does not violate right to FAPE if the missing information was

nonetheless known to all parties at the time).

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to the suitability of the overall education program, the ability of his teachers and parents to

evaluate his execution of that program in a meaningful way, and the ability of the school system

and Benton’s parents to track his performance. Without dates of mastery for Benton’s IEP

benchmarks, there is no permanent school record showing his achievements as to those

benchmarks over time.42 Needless to say, it would be extraordinarily difficult for meaningful

programs to be fashioned prospectively for Benton without reasonable records to demonstrate

where he had been and what he previously had and had not been able to achieve. From an

educational standpoint, Benton’s teachers, counselors and parents desperately needed the

diagnostic, evaluative tool of dates of mastery to understand Benton’s status and needs. The

omission of such information must necessarily have a detrimental effect on educational programs

formed and implemented for Benton on a going forward basis, inasmuch as such programs

would be based on imperfect (and/or simply missing) data about Benton’s achievement.43

Similarly, without meaningful, measurable objectives and goals, Benton’s educators and parents

were engaged in a futile endeavor to pin the tail on a moving donkey while blindfolded in a dark

room. In other words, meaningful, measurable objectives give Benton a target to work towards

and his educators and parents a way to evaluate his progress. The mushy, ambiguous,

unquantifiable goals often listed in Benton’s IEPs are at odds with IDEA objectives to have

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44 The Board protests that there was no evidence that Benton was deprived of an

educational benefit by this IEP. But such a contention is ultimately circular. The flaws in

Benton’s IEPs are such that it is not possible to track his educational progress against goals in a

meaningful way, and no records delineating his attainment vis a vis incremental benchmarks

towards achieving those goals have been maintained. Amidst this IEP-induced murkiness, it

would be inordinately difficult to assess whether Benton is receiving an educational benefit for

the simple reason that the defects in the IEP deprive a factfinder of the necessary tools to

evaluate his progress. Having crafted the IEP in a manner that defies assessment of Benton’s

progress, the Board cannot be heard to complain of lack of evidence of insufficient progress.

45 These errors are not merely superficial. Inspection of Benton’s IEPs for 2002-03

and 2003-04 reflects that annual goals and benchmarks stagnated and even backslid from year to

year, with no indication as to whether he had made progress towards achieving them. For

example, the 2002-03 IEP included a benchmark that Benton “will demonstrate cutting skills by

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Benton progress towards tangible goals and measure his achievement in working towards them. 

Vague and unmeasurable objectives are the handmaiden of stagnation, as a program cannot

possibly confer an educational benefit to Benton if his teachers and parents do not know where

they are trying to take Benton and how they will know when he has arrived.44

As a final observation, the undersigned emphasizes that it is not substituting its judgment

for that of Escambia County education officials as to what educational methodology or

techniques might be most effective in conferring educational benefits upon Benton. This is not a

case that turns on one’s pedagogical persuasion or educational philosophy. The Court does not

secondguess the methodology employed by the school system as the nuts and bolts of teaching

Benton every day. What the Court does find unacceptable and in violation of Benton’s right to a

FAPE is the Board’s inexplicable disregard for minimum practices in preparing and

implementing IEPs for Benton. The Board does not keep meaningful records showing whether

and when Benton satisfies benchmarks delineated in his IEPs. Such an oversight violates the

requirements of the IDEA and breeds confusion and ignorance in the educational programs

prepared for Benton, simply because there is no institutional knowledge or meaningful record as

to what tangible stepping stones he has achieved from one year to the next. Likewise, the Board

has couched Benton’s annual goals in fuzzy, ambiguous, ill-defined terms that render it difficult

to know what the objectives are, and virtually impossible to measure whether he has achieved

them.45 On this record, the Court finds that the procedural inadequacies in Benton’s IEPs

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cutting straight, diagonal, and curved lines without assistance on 8 of 10 trails [sic].” (Bd. Exh.

9.) The 2003-04 IEP included a benchmark very similar to its predecessor, except that the term

“without assistance” had been replaced by the term “with assistance.” (Bd. Exh. 10.) Was

Benton able to achieve the “without assistance” benchmark in 2002-03? If so, then why did the

2003-04 benchmark go backwards? Elsewhere, there is substantial overlap between the 2002-03

benchmarks and those for 2003-04. Is that because Benton was unable to achieve the 2002-03

benchmarks? If he had actually achieved them, then what educational benefit would be

conferred by requiring him to reestablish his ability to satisfy those same benchmarks the next

year? Thus, the missing data throws Benton’s IEPs into disarray, undermining the goals and

objectives set for him and reducing the IEP process to a hollow shell of what the IDEA intended. 

Such a state of affairs necessarily implicates Benton’s educational opportunities and benefits,

stripping him of a FAPE. Compare Amanda J. ex rel. Annette J. v. Clark County School Dist.,

267 F.3d 877, 895 (9th Cir. 2001) (school district’s failure to develop IEP in accordance with

IDEA procedures may itself deny child a FAPE, thereby mooting question of whether proposed

IEPs were reasonably calculated to confer educational benefits) with Jack P. v. Auburn Union

Elementary School Dist., 2005 WL 2042269, *18 (E.D. Cal. Aug. 23, 2005) (“Plaintiff rightly

points out that a failure to keep good records could make it difficult to tell whether Jack lost an

educational opportunity, however, in this case the records are sufficient to provide a decent

picture of Jack's performance. It is clear that some of the goals were met, and it is also clear that

Jack made little to no progress on others.”).

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resulted in a loss of educational opportunities, deprived his parents of information reasonably

needed to enable them to participate in the IEP formulation process, and caused a deprivation of

educational benefits, thereby denying him a FAPE. See Iapalucci, 2005 WL 3274479, at *9.

The Board’s assertion that the Hearing Officer erred in finding that inadequacies in

Benton’s IEPs violated his right to a FAPE is overruled.

IV. Conclusion.

For all of the foregoing reasons, the undersigned finds that the Board’s assignments of

error to the Administrative Decision are lacking in merit. Accordingly, the Motion for Summary

Judgment or, in the Alternative, Judgment on the Administrative Record (doc. 29) is denied. 

The administrative record being sufficiently developed to enable the Court to evaluate the

validity of the Hearing Officer’s findings, the parties not having identified any material disputes

of fact warranting an evidentiary hearing, and the Board’s initial pleading not purporting to raise

any issues or seek any relief other than the appeal of the Administrative Decision, no further

proceedings are necessary or appropriate in this action. Indeed, the foregoing determinations are

dispositive of all material issues identified by the parties. For that reason, notwithstanding the

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46 In upholding the Administrative Decision, the undersigned does not find (and the

Hearing Officer did not find) any violation of the IDEA based on the Board’s failure to prepare a

separate IEP for Benton for 2004-05. The record establishes that the Board’s reasonable efforts

to develop such an IEP were stymied by Benton’s parents’ unwillingness to participate, leaving

Benton without the benefit of a new IEP. (Hrg. Transcript, at 577-88, 672-74.) Where delay in

formulating an IEP is caused by a student (or his parents), the procedural requirements of the

IDEA are not violated. See Loren, 349 F.3d at 1312 (parents’ remedies under IDEA may be

limited even in absence of FAPE if parents’ actions frustrated school’s efforts to provide same);

Doe, 915 F.2d at 663 (no procedural violation where delay in formulating IEP was caused by

child’s parents); E.D. ex rel. Dukes v. Enterprise City Bd. of Educ., 273 F. Supp.2d 1252, 1267-

68 (M.D. Ala. 2003) (where delay in implementation of new IEP was at least partially

attributable to child’s parents, such delay is not a violation of procedural requirements of IDEA). 

Thus, nothing in the Administrative Decision, and nothing in this Order, imputes wrongdoing to

the Board for the non-completion of an IEP for Benton for the 2004-05 school year.

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absence of a parallel dispositive motion filed by Benton’s counsel, the Administrative Decision

is hereby affirmed and the instant appeal is dismissed.

46 The Board’s Motion to Supplement

(doc. 33) is granted.

DONE and ORDERED this 23rd day of December, 2005.

s/ WILLIAM H. STEELE 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Case 1:05-cv-00009-WS-B Document 35 Filed 12/23/05 Page 35 of 35