Opinion ID: 797292
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Violations of the IDEA's Procedural Requirements

Text: 20 Against this background, we turn to Van Duyn's argument that the District's alleged failures to implement his IEP amounted to both a violation of the IDEA's procedural requirements and a substantive violation that denied him a free appropriate public education. We conclude there were neither procedural nor substantive violations of the statute. 21 Van Duyn's first contention is that by failing to implement portions of the IEP, the District changed the IEP without notifying his parents in advance — a violation of the IDEA's procedural requirements for the formulation and revision of IEPs. See § 1415(b)(3). In his view, this procedural defect impeded his parents' right to participate in decisions regarding the IEP and hence violated the statute even if he cannot directly establish that he was deprived of educational benefits or a free appropriate public education. See § 1415(f)(3)(E)(ii)(II) (IDEA violated if procedural flaws significantly impede[] the parents' opportunity to participate in the decisionmaking process regarding the provision of a free appropriate public education to the parents' child). 22 Van Duyn's procedural argument fails because there is no evidence in the record that the District ever attempted to change his IEP after the 2001-02 school year began. He points to no concrete proposals to change the IEP, nor is there any testimony or documentary evidence that the District decided to revise the IEP in secret. The District did request a [m]eeting to discuss Augmentative Communication and Autism Service Time in May 2001. But Van Duyn's parents were notified about the meeting, it took place well before the 2001-02 school year started and it resulted in no change to the IEP because the IEP team decided that [t]ransitioning to a new school and teachers is a major change for an Autistic student and more services are needed. 23 Van Duyn's procedural argument thus boils down to the novel proposition that failures to implement an IEP are equivalent to changes to an IEP. If accepted, this proposition would convert all IEP implementation failures into procedural violations of the IDEA, but there is no indication that a conflation of this sort is intended or permitted by the statute. Moreover, the one case that Van Duyn cites as support, an unpublished Maryland district court decision, is unhelpful to him. Manalansan v. Board of Educ. of Baltimore City, No. Civ. AMD 01-312, 2001 WL 939699 (D.Md. Aug.14, 2001) (unpublished), held that the Baltimore educational authority violated the IDEA because of substantive failures in implementing an IEP — not because of any procedural shortcomings in the IEP's formulation or implementation. See 2001 WL 939699, at  (free appropriate public education denied because the only rational determination . . . is that defendants have failed to implement Brandon's IEP). Like all other courts to have considered the relationship between IEP implementation failures and IDEA procedural violations, Manalansan understood the tardiness and absences of the plaintiff's aides as failures to implement the IEP, not surreptitious attempts to alter it.