Opinion ID: 147102
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Tuition Reimbursement for Procedural Violations of the IDEA

Text: The Parents here seek tuition reimbursement for C.H.'s private education at the Gow School. (Compl. Relief ¶¶ d-g.) Thus, in order to recover, the Parents must demonstrate that the District violated the IDEA in a way that caused a substantive harmeither by depriving C.H. of an educational benefit or significantly impeding the Parents' participation in the decision-making process regarding C.H.'s education. The Parents premise their alleged harm on the District's procedural violations of the IDEA. These procedural violations take two principal forms: the District's failure to have an IEP in place on the first day of the 2006-2007 school year, and the District's failure to notify the Parents ten days prior to any scheduled IEP meeting. [7] The District Court reasoned that these procedural violations, to the extent they occurred, did not rise to the level of the denial of a FAPE. We agree.
There is no dispute that the District failed to have an IEP in place on the first day of the 2006-2007 school year. This is a violation of the plain mandate of the IDEA that a District should have an IEP in place [a]t the beginning of each school year. 20 U.S.C. § 1414(d)(2)(A). Thus, acknowledging that a procedural violation has occurred, we must determine whether, under the circumstances, this violation can meaningfully be said to have [i]mpeded the child's right to a FAPE or caused a deprivation of [an] educational benefit. Id. § 300.513(a)(2)(i), (iii). The Fourth Circuit considered this question under similar circumstances in MM v. School District of Greenville County, 303 F.3d 523 (4th Cir.2002). In Greenville, a four year-old child (MM) suffered from a form of dystrophy and mild autism and was enrolled in a public preschool program, receiving special services under the IDEA. Id. at 528. Her parents also participated in a private in-home program for autism when MM was not in preschool. Id. For the 1995-1996 school year, MM had an IEP in place that the parents had approved. Id. In May of 1996, the IEP team convened to reassess MM's progress and proposed an IEP that did not include extended school year services to cover a summer educational program for MM. Id. at 528-29. The parents objected and the IEP was not agreed to for the 1996-1997 school year. Id. at 529. A subsequent meeting on August 8 was similarly unsuccessful, in large part because the parents insisted that the in-home autism treatment should be part of the IEP. Id. A third meeting was scheduled for August 22, but the parents cancelled the meeting. Id. The parents then unilaterally decided to enroll MM in a private kindergarten program, and she never attended classes in the public school district for the 1996-1997 school year. Id. In assessing the parents' claim for reimbursement of MM's private tuition costs, the court considered whether the school district's failure to have an IEP in place before the start of classes resulted in the loss of an educational opportunity for the disabled child, or whether ... it was a mere technical contravention of the IDEA. Id. at 533. Under the facts of that case, the court reasoned that the District was willing to offer MM a FAPE, and that it had attempted to do so[,] and that her parents had a full opportunity to participate in the development of the Proposed 1996-97 IEP. Id. at 534. Additionally, there was no evidence that MM suffered any educational loss because her parents would [not] have accepted any FAPE offered by the District that did not included reimbursement for the [in-home autism] program and MM suffered no prejudice from the District's failure to agree to her parents' demands. Id. at 535. The court ultimately concluded that [b]ecause this procedural defect did not result in any lost educational opportunity for MM, the reimbursement claim failed. Id. The court further admonished, it would be improper to hold [the] School District liable for the procedural violation of failing to have the IEP completed and signed, when that failure was the result of [the parents'] lack of cooperation. Id. at 534 (quoting district court slip op. at 15). On the other hand, we note the Sixth Circuit, in Knable v. Bexley City School District, 238 F.3d 755, 766-67 (6th Cir. 2001), held that a draft IEP did not satisfy the IDEA and that the school district's failure to formulate a final IEP prior to the start of the school year resulted in a denial of FAPE. However, central to the Sixth Circuit's analysis was the fact that the school district there never convened an IEP meeting, either before or after the start of the school year, and that the disabled student enrolled in the district for the school year and never received an IEP. Thus, the court reasoned, the absence of an IEP at any time during [the child's] sixth-grade year caused [him] to lose educational opportunity. Id. at 766. Reconciling these approaches, we find the Fourth Circuit's reasoning in Greenville highly persuasive in our present analysis. The District here demonstrated consistent willingness to evaluate C.H. and to develop an IEP for the 2006-2007 school year. Despite some initial delays in finalizing the authorization, C.H. was evaluated by a District psychologist a month before the start of school and an IEP team convened shortly thereafter to develop his educational program. Although the IEP was not completed in the first meeting, it was the Parents and not the District who delayed the continuation of that meeting until after the start of classes, and ultimately terminated the process by filing a due process request. Like the court in Greenville, we decline to hold that a school district is liable for procedural violations that are thrust upon it by uncooperative parents. Additionally, we lack the essential element in the Sixth Circuit's analysis in Knable: the ability to determine whether the failure to develop an IEP on the first day of classes would have resulted in a lost educational benefit for the disabled child. C.H. never attended a single class in the District in the 2006-2007 school year. The Parents enrolled C.H. in Gow on the presumption that the District's failure to have the IEP in place on the first day would deprive C.H. of an educational benefit. Neither the Hearing Panel nor the District Court credited this presumption as fact. Rather, the Hearing Panel reasoned that an IEP could have been developed for C.H. within a week of the start of the school year, had C.H. remained in the District and had the Parents continued to cooperate. We will not disrupt that determination in the face of mere supposition. Absent any evidence that C.H. would have suffered an educational loss, we are left only to determine whether the failure to have an IEP in place on the first day of school is, itself, the loss of an educational benefit. While we do not sanction a school district's failure to provide an IEP for even a de minimis period, we decline to hold as a matter of law that any specific period of time without an IEP is a denial of a FAPE in the absence of specific evidence of an educational deprivation. As the Supreme Court has cautioned, parents who unilaterally change their child's placement during the pendency of review proceedings, without the consent of state or local school officials, do so at their own financial risk. Florence County Sch. Dist. Four v. Carter, 510 U.S. 7, 15, 114 S.Ct. 361, 126 L.Ed.2d 284 (1993). Accordingly, the District's failure to have an IEP in place on the first day of classes did not deprive C.H. of a FAPE, and reimbursement on that basis was properly denied.
Next we turn to the question of whether any alleged failure on the District's part to timely notify the Parents of IEP meetings significantly impeded the parent's opportunity to participate in the decision-making process regarding the provision of a FAPE[.] 34 C.F.R. § 300.513(a)(2)(ii). As explained above, the IDEA contains a notice provision, requiring prior written notice to parents whenever an agency proposes or refuses to initiate or change the identification, evaluation, or educational placement of the child, or the provision of a free appropriate public education to the child. 20 U.S.C. § 1415(b)(3). These procedures are designed to ensure that the parents of a child with a disability are both notified of decisions affecting their child and given an opportunity to object to these decisions. See id. § 1415(a). Thus in cases where a violation of a notification requirement does not actually impair the parents' knowledge of, or participation in, educational decisions, the violation is not a substantive harm under the IDEA. See, e.g., Gadsby by Gadsby v. Grasmick, 109 F.3d 940, 956 (4th Cir.1997) (noting that parents received late notice with ample time to respond and holding that [b]ecause any violation of the notice provisions did not interfere with the provision of a free appropriate public education to [the child], these violations cannot subject [the district] to liability for reimbursement of [private school] tuition). We are not persuaded that the alleged notification violations here impaired the Parents' ability to participate in the IEP meetings. As to the first meeting on August 22, C.H.'s mother signed a written waiver of ten-day notice of IEP meetings, leading the District Court to correctly conclude that no notice violation occurred. However, even if a violation had occurred, the Parents do not claim it had any effect on their ability to participate fully in the meeting, and C.H.'s mother attended the August 22 meeting without objection. Further, the Parents do not allege that they were unaware of the September 11 continuation of the IEP meeting, only that they did not receive the formal notice required by the IDEA. [8] In fact, C.H.'s mother testified that she was present when the District scheduled the meeting for September 11, though she says she did not commit to it and expected notice when the date was finalized. She further testified that the reason she did not attend the September 11 meeting was because she had filed for due process, not because she was unaware of the meeting schedule. The procedural requirements of the IDEA governing notice of IEP meetings are intended to ensure parental participation in the IEP process, not to provide the Parents with a hook on which to hang a tuition reimbursement claim. It is clear to us, as it was to the District Court, that the Parents have been their own greatest impediment to participation in the evaluation of C.H.'s disabilities and the development of an appropriate IEP. We therefore affirm the District Court's rejection of the argument that any notice deficiencies rise to the level of substantive harm.