Opinion ID: 2971450
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Whether the District Court Correctly

Text: Admitted Additional Evidence Offered by Bellamy The appellant school district argues that the district court inappropriately admitted evidence of: 1) assessments of Pacoda’s disability that were not presented at the due process hearing; 2) prior IEPs that were not considered by the ALJ; and 3) information about a procedural violation, not raised at the due process hearing, committed by the school district during the 1999-2000 school year. The IDEA mandates that a district court, reviewing an ALJ decision, “(i) shall receive the records of the administrative proceedings; (ii) shall hear additional evidence at the request of a party; and (iii) basing its decision on the preponderance of the evidence, shall grant such relief as the court determines is appropriate.” 20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(2)(B). The Sixth Circuit has interpreted the statutory phrase “additional evidence” broadly, explaining that the term “‘[a]dditional,’ in its ordinary usage, implies something that is added, or something that exists by way of addition. To ‘add’ means to join and unite; the limitation on what can be joined inherent in the term ‘supplement’ is not present in the term ‘add.’” Metro. Bd. of Pub. Educ. v. Guest, 193 F.3d 457, 463 (6th Cir. 1999) (quoting Metro. Gov’t of Nashville and Davidson County v. Cook, 915 F.2d 232, 234 (6th Cir. 1990)). A district court may not, however, admit evidence to rule on issues beyond those presented to the ALJ. Id. This approach balances IDEA’s mandate that courts consider additional evidence with the 7 requirement that the parties exhaust their remedies at the administrative level before presenting an issue to the courts. Id.
Who Examined Pacoda After the Due Process Hearing The school district argues that the district court improperly admitted the testimony of Dr. Judith Kaas-Weiss and Jennie McGuire. Kaas-Weiss evaluated Pacoda in April, 2001, and testified at the district court’s evidentiary hearing in December, 2002, that, in her opinion, Pacoda is not mentally retarded.2 J.A. at 263. Her opinion contrasted with that of the school district’s experts, who evaluated Pacoda using different intelligence tests — the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet tests — and determined that Pacoda is mentally retarded.3 McGuire, a speech therapist, began providing speech therapy to Pacoda in January, 2002. In October, 2002, McGuire began training Pacoda to use a communication device that allows Pacoda to communicate her needs through a picture-based screen. J.A. at 54. She testified that Pacoda has made 2 Kaas-Weiss explained that she administered a test to Pacoda called the Comprehensive Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (CTONI). J.A. at 52-53. She explained that this test differs from the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet tests used by the school district to evaluate Pacoda because the CTONI does not require the test subject to verbalize answers or use fine motor skills. KaasWeiss thought the CTONI was more appropriate for Pacoda because “she’s incomprehensible when she speaks, so there is no way, even if she knew the answer in her head to the verbal portion of the [Wechsler] test, to respond comprehensively. And the performance part [of the Wechsler test] requires fine motor skills that she doesn’t have.” 3 Pacoda’s IQ was tested in 1995 by Josephine Cheatham, M.Ed., who administered a series of tests, including the Stanford-Binet test, and concluded that Pacoda was mentally retarded. J.A. at 51. In 1999, Dr. Warren Thompson, a psychologist for the school district, administered the Wechsler test to Pacoda. Dr. Thompson also determined that Pacoda was mentally retarded. To make this determination, Thompson administered both verbal and performance portions of the test. Although he thought that Pacoda’s speech was difficult to understand, he concluded that he could understand her well enough to score her answers. 8 considerable progress with the communication device and will be able to use it throughout her life. J.A. at 247. The school district argues that neither Kaas-Weiss’s nor McGuire’s testimony relates back to Pacoda’s 1999-2000 IEP – the only IEP, according to the school board, at issue – and is thus not properly admissible under Guest. The school district argues that the Bellamys did not raise the issue of the appropriateness of the mentally retarded designation on Pacoda’s IEP at the due process hearing; thus, according to the school district, they could not introduce evidence to contradict that designation at the hearing before the district court. The Bellamys argue, in response, that the testimony at issue, which goes directly to the question of whether, how, and what Pacoda can learn, applies directly to whether Pacoda’s 1999-2000 IEP was appropriate to her educational needs. The mere fact that Kaas-Weiss and McGuire examined Pacoda after the due process hearing occurred does not, by itself, make admission of their testimony erroneous. See Guest, 193 F.3d at 46263. The district court should not, however, “allow such evidence to change the character [of] the hearing from one of review to a trial de novo.” Cook, 915 F.2d at 234-35. The district court should “weigh heavily the important concerns of not allowing a party to undercut the statutory role of administrative expertise, the unfairness involved in one party’s reserving its best evidence for trial, the reason the witness did not testify at the administrative hearing, and the conservation of judicial resources.” Id. at 235. The focus in the instant case is on whether the district court admitted the testimony of Kaas-Weiss and McGuire for the purpose of deciding issues that were not decided by the ALJ. See, e.g., Guest, 193 9 F.3d at 463 (holding that the district court exceeds its jurisdiction when it uses additional evidence to rule on issues beyond those presented to the ALJ). Although the district court’s conclusion that “the IEPs developed for her were not properly designed to confer a meaningful educational benefit” refers to IEPs (i.e., plural IEPs), this does not lead to the conclusion that the district court improperly expanded the scope of its evidentiary hearing and review when it admitted the testimony of Kaas-Weiss and McGuire. The Bellamys were not asking the district court to evaluate Pacoda’s other IEPs, and the district court did not rule directly on the appropriateness of them. It merely relied on Kaas-Weiss’s testimony that Pacoda’s condition and cognitive abilities appeared to have been improperly diagnosed for several years to support its conclusion that her diagnosis of her disability – and, therefore, her education plan – was inappropriate for the school year 1999-2000. This is not a situation where the district court used the testimony of Kaas-Weiss and McGuire to hold that Pacoda’s other IEPs were inappropriate or ordered remedies related to those IEPs. The district court’s action echoed the trial court’s action in Guest, in which this Court stated that “[e]vidence arising from events occurring during the 1996-1997 and 1997-1998 school years was properly admitted by the district court, but only for the purpose of deciding whether the proposed IEP for the 1996-1997 school year was reasonably calculated to lead to educational benefits.” 193 F.3d at 463 (citing Rowley, 458 U.S. at 206-07; Fuhrmann v. East Hanover Bd. of Educ., 993 F.2d 1031, 1040 (3d Cir. 1993)); see also Fuhrmann, 993 F.2d at 1040 (“evidence of a student’s later educational progress may only be considered in determining whether the original IEP was reasonably calculated to afford some educational benefit”). 10 Consideration of the factors recited in Cook – not allowing a party to undercut the statutory role of administrative expertise, the unfairness of allowing a party to save its best evidence for trial, the reason for the witness’s failure to testify at the due process hearing, and conservation of judicial resources – support the district court’s decision to admit the evidence. See 915 F.2d at 235. First, in this case, the testimony of the witnesses before the district court supported, rather than undercut the determination of the administrative law judge. Next, the Bellamys could not have presented the testimony of Kaas-Weiss and McGuire at the due process hearing because neither examined Pacoda until after the hearing. Their decision to procure these evaluations grew out of their belief that the 1999-2000 IEP was insufficient and failed to serve Pacoda’s needs. The additional evidence provided by Kaas-Weiss and McGuire supported the contention that they had asserted consistently. Additionally, the Bellamys were not represented by counsel at the due process hearing. Although this does not excuse their failure to present additional evidence at the due process hearing, it helps to explain their failure to have obtained this evidence earlier. Because the Bellamys had neither the opportunity nor resources to procure additional evaluations of Pacoda before the due process hearing, the district court did not abuse its discretion, in its effort fairly to adjudicate the Bellamy’s appeal, when it introduced this additional evidence.
The school district argues that the ALJ’s decision was based solely on the appropriateness of the 1999-2000 IEP; therefore, the district court should not have considered other IEPs in evaluating the ALJ’s decision. The school district also contends that the district court’s consideration of the additional evidence improperly changed the character of the hearing “from one of review to a trial de novo.” Cook, 11 915 F.2d at 235. Finally, the school district asserts that it presented the only evidence at the due process hearing regarding the appropriateness of the disputed IEP. The Bellamys point out that the ALJ considered several evaluations of Pacoda conducted prior to the 1999-2000 school year. Citing the school district’s evaluations of Pacoda in 1993, 1995, and 1999, and noting that Pacoda throughout this period had scored below average on the Wechsler test and Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, the ALJ observed the her “performance measured by these standardized tests falls within a narrow range at the lowest percentiles; therefore, even changes in the Student’s measured performance that might have statistical significance are, as a practical matter, inconsequential.” J.A. at 20. Thus, prior IEPs were part of the record before the ALJ. That the ALJ looked to the earlier IEPs to assess Pacoda’s needs is apparent from his order to the district that it provide Pacoda with four years of compensatory education. This remedy was, at least in part, based on the pre-1999-2000 school year evaluations. As noted above, a district court may admit additional evidence provided it does not use that evidence to rule on issues not before the ALJ. Guest, 193 F.3d at 463. In this case the district court’s memorandum cited Pacoda’s previous IEPs to demonstrate the course of the diagnoses of her condition during her enrollment in the defendant’s schools. The district court also noted that Pacoda’s IEP for the 1999-2000 school year took into account her intelligence scores from previously-administered evaluations – the same evaluations the ALJ discussed. Although the district court must “be careful to avoid imposing [its] view of preferable educational methods upon the States,” Rowley, 458 U.S. at 207, the scope of the district court’s analysis remained confined to the question of whether the IEP for the 1999-2000 school year was adequate to meet Pacoda’s needs. This was the issue before the ALJ. While the district court may have accorded greater 12 weight to some of the evidence, or examined it in greater detail than did the ALJ, it did not exceed the proper scope of its review, or otherwise err when it took cognizance of Pacoda’s earlier IEPs. 3. Evidence of the District’s Procedural Violation The Bellamys requested an IEP team meeting on February 3, 2000. The rules of the Tennessee State Board of Education require that such meeting be convened within ten school days of such request. Tenn. Dep’t of Educ., State Bd. of Educ., Rules, Regulations, and Minimum Standards for the Operation of the Public School System 0520-1-9-.10(3)(a), available at http://www.state.tn.us/sos/rules/0520/0520-01/0520-01.htm (“Upon the written request of any member, the IEP team shall be convened within ten (10) schooldays to review or revise the IEP or consider the child’s placement.”). According to the record, such a meeting was not convened – the February 23, 2000, meeting did not occur within ten days, nor did the entire IEP team attend. The full IEP team finally met on March 31, 2000, long after the ten-day period had expired. This was, according to the Bellamys, a procedural violation.4 The school district asserts that the ALJ made no finding of procedural violations by the school district; thus, the school district argues, the district court’s decision to admit evidence of such a violation was improper. 4 School districts have an obligation to “establish and maintain” procedural safeguards under 20 U.S.C. § 1415(a) In Rowley, the Supreme Court explained: It seems to us no exaggeration to say that Congress placed every bit as much emphasis upon compliance with procedures giving parents and guardians a large measure of participation at every stage of the administrative process, see, e.g., §§ 1415(a)-(d), as it did upon the measurement of the resulting IEP against a substantive standard. 458 U.S. at 205-06. 13 The Bellamys assert that the ALJ properly admitted evidence of the procedural violation at the due process hearing, even though he did not mention the procedural violation in his order or memorandum. The Bellamys also argue that, even if the district court erred in admitting evidence of the procedural violation, the district court’s opinion should be affirmed because the court did not rely on that procedural violation in reaching its decision. The school district is correct that the ALJ did not make a finding that the failure timely to convene the IEP meeting constituted a procedural violation. The Bellamys, on the other hand, correctly contend that the ALJ admitted evidence of their request for such meeting and the school district’s failure to respond to that request. Nothing in the Sixth Circuit’s case law suggests that the district court is precluded from making a finding that a procedural violation occurred just because the ALJ did not make such a finding. The district court applies a “modified” de novo standard of review to the findings of the ALJ. Tucker, 136 F.3d at 503. The district court is required “to make its findings of fact based on a preponderance of the evidence contained in the record (including evidence contained in both the administrative record and in the record of deposition testimony made before the district court), while giving deference to the fact findings of the administrative proceedings . . . .” Id. In the instant case, the ALJ admitted the evidence on which the district court made its finding that the Bellamys’ request for an IEP team meeting triggered the school district’s duty to convene such a meeting. J.A. at 58. Thus, the finding of the procedural violation by the district court was based on evidence admitted previously by the ALJ.