Opinion ID: 2452988
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Reimbursement of private evaluation costs is appropriate based on the school district's delay, its use of the parents' private eligibility assessment, and the inadequacy of alternative remedies.

Text: The school district argues that since P.P. was ultimately deemed in eligible for special education services, he was not denied a free appropriate public education and his parents are not entitled to reimbursement for the private eligibility assessment. Under the circumstances of this case, we disagree. The United States Supreme Court noted in Forest Grove, An order awarding reimbursement of private-education costs when a school district fails to provide a [free appropriate public education] merely requires the district to belatedly pay expenses that it should have paid all along. [47] We agree with the superior court in this case that, under Forest Grove and the language of the IDEA, reimbursement of the cost of education services is appropriate only where a child has been found eligible for special education services. But children in the Anchorage School District are entitled to be evaluated for services if an evaluation is properly requested on their behalf; the IDEA does not condition the entitlement to this screening upon the outcome of the screening. And school districts are mandated to provide these evaluations in a timely manner. [48] It is neither unreasonable nor surprising that concerned parents who do not receive an eligibility assessment within the 45 school day period allowed under the IDEA will seek to obtain private eligibility assessments for their children, if they can afford to do so. The school district acknowledges this, but argues that when a district fails to act upon a request for an evaluation in a timely manner, the IDEA limits parents' recourse to: (1) requesting a due process hearing; or (2) pursuing an administrative complaint with the Department of Education to obtain an order directing the district to conduct an evaluation. There are several problems with the district's interpretation of the statute. The first is apparent from the facts of this case: the school district delayed evaluation and then, after parents resorted to private testing, used the results of that testing to satisfy its own eligibility assessment obligation. The district thus eliminated the need for at least some of the testing that the district would otherwise have been required to perform. Dr. Fuller administered nine separate tests of P.P., producing an 11-page evaluation summary and over 150 pages of testing materials and detailed results. The district's Evaluation Summary and Eligibility Report relied exclusively on the results of Dr. Fuller's Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children for its cognitive assessment of P.P. [49] One of the three behavior/social/emotional assessments contained in the district's report was based on testing administered by Dr. Fuller, and one of the district's three educational assessmentsthe Woodcock-Johnson III achievement test [50] was based entirely on Dr. Fuller's test results. [51] We do not question the school district's decision to use Dr. Fuller's results in its evaluation; there appear to be valid reasons to avoid repeatedly giving the same test to a student within a short period of time. [52] But this does not change the fact that, by delaying its evaluation and relying on the private evaluation paid for by L.P. and J.P., the district partially avoided the cost of completing its statutorily mandated assessment of P.P.'s eligibility for services and entirely avoided the cost of the independent assessment his parents would have been entitled to request in response to the district's assessment. Under these unique circumstances, reimbursement merely requires the district to belatedly pay expenses that it should have paid all along [53] and is necessary to hold the school district to its child find obligations under the IDEA. Nothing prevents the district from conducting additional testing if the parent's choice of evaluators is unacceptable to the district, and our ruling only requires the district to pay for the reasonable assessment it is statutorily required to perform. Moreover, we observe that, despite conceding that P.P. had a right to be evaluated for eligibility and that he was entitled to some form of recourse as a result of the district's delay, the school district failed to identify any satisfactory alternative remedies for P.P. and his parents under the facts of this case. The district argues that P.P. could have filed for a due process hearing or pursued a complaint procedure through the Department of Education. But J.P. and L.P. requested an evaluation of their child in May of his first grade year, and were told to wait until the fall. Before their son started second grade, J.P. and L.P. gave the district a written request to evaluate their child. They also met with his principal and teacher, and waited 45 school days. When they received no response, J.P. and L.P. requested a due process hearing to protest the district's failure to act, repeated their request for an evaluation, and only then made arrangements to obtain a private evaluation. The school district did not complete its eligibility assessment until January of 2008, approximately three months after the expiration of the 45 school-day period. In addition, the district acknowledged at oral argument before our court that parents are intended to receive information about the Department of Education complaint process in the Notice of Procedural Safeguards. Here, the district failed to provide L.P. and J.P. with the Notice of Procedural Safeguards, in violation of 4 AAC 52.480. The school district should not be permitted to rely on its own procedural error to claim that L.P. and J.P. did not seek all available remedies and that they are precluded from reimbursement as a result.