Opinion ID: 619866
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Post-August 29, 2008 Effect

Text: Whether the application of the stay put provision of the IDEA requires that K.D. remain at Loveland Academy after the filing of the August 29, 2008 due process hearing request depends on whether Loveland is K.D.'s current educational placement. [1] 20 U.S.C. § 1415(j). We have previously recognized that the term current educational placement is not defined within the IDEA. N.D., 600 F.3d at 1114. We have interpreted `current educational placement' to mean `the placement set forth in the child's last implemented IEP.' We have offered no additional guidance on the issue. Id. (internal citation omitted). The dispute between the DOE and K.D. centers on the effect, if any, of the March 2007 settlement on K.D.'s educational placement. K.D. argues that he was placed at Loveland by the settlement agreement, and that Loveland remained his current educational placement because he continued to attend school and he never accepted any of the subsequent IEPs offered by the DOE. In response, the DOE contends that the settlement agreement only required the DOE to pay K.D.'s Loveland tuition for the 2006-07 school year and did not make Loveland K.D.'s placement for purposes of the stay put provision. We agree with the DOE. We have previously held that a post-placement administrative or judicial determination can operate to define the current educational placement of a child. Where a parent unilaterally changes the placement of a child, but a subsequent administrative or judicial decision confirms that the parental placement is appropriate, the decision constitute[s] an agreement by the State to the change of placement and the placement becomes the current educational placement for the purposes of the stay put provision. See Clovis Unified Sch. Dist. v. California Office of Admin. Hearings, 903 F.2d 635, 641 (9th Cir.1990) (citing Burlington, 471 U.S. at 372-73, 105 S.Ct. 1996); see also L.M. v. Capistrano Unified Sch. Dist., 556 F.3d 900, 903 (9th Cir.2009) (Where the agency or the court has ruled on the appropriateness of the educational placement in the parents' favor, the school district is responsible for appropriate private education costs regardless of the outcome of an appeal.). However, such a favorable decision for a parent must expressly find that the private placement was appropriate. See L.M., 556 F.3d at 903-04 (finding that there was no implied current educational placement because the district court's ruling in favor of the parents was on procedural grounds and the court never adjudicated the appropriateness of the private placement). The cited cases do not apply directly to this case because there was no favorable agency or district court decision agreeing with K.D.'s initial unilateral placement at Loveland. Rather, K.D. urges us to construe the March 2007 settlement agreement as having the same effect. We have never determined whether a settlement agreement may have the same legal effect as an affirmative agency decision to define a student's current educational placement. However, two cases that have addressed this issue (neither of which is binding upon us) provide helpful reasoning for our consideration. In Zvi D., a student was transferred by his parents to a private school, different from the one in which he had been placed by the state. 694 F.2d at 907. After his parents filed a due process hearing request, the Board of Education agreed to provide funding at the new private school for the 1978-79 school year through an agreement that also provided for a review of the student's classification, to be conducted at the end of the school year with a a view toward placing him in an appropriate public program in September, 1979. Id. The agency subsequently challenging agency decision, as well as an appeal from the district court's final judgment. Joshua A. v. Rocklin Unified Sch. Dist., 559 F.3d 1036, 1038 (9th Cir.2009). reevaluated the student and placed him for the 1979-80 school year at a public school. Id. The Second Circuit concluded that the new private school was not the current educational placement because the agreement did not constitute public agency placement of the student at the school and no agency decision ever determined that the parent's private placement was appropriate. Id. at 908. Thus, during [ ] review of his initial placement, [the student] has a right to a place in a public school or he may remain at [the new private school] at his parent's expense. Id. (internal citations omitted). While agreeing that the agency would have been required to pay for the student's private school education had the agency previously agreed to, or been ordered to provide private school placement, the court stated that [p]ayment and placement are two different matters. Id. In contrast, K.D. urges us to follow the outcome in Bayonne Board of Education v. R.S., 954 F.Supp. 933 (D.N.J.1997). In Bayonne, an autistic student was originally placed in a public school, but his parents removed him from that school, placed him in a private school, and filed a request for a due process hearing. Id. at 935. The due process hearing resulted in a settlement agreement wherein the Board agreed to undertake the placement of the student at the private school effective March 1, 1996. Id. The settlement agreement further stated that the student would return to public school starting September 1996, subject to the satisfaction of fourteen conditions. Id. at 935-36. The court found the factual situation in Bayonne to be distinguishable from that in Zvi D. because the Bayonne settlement agreement specifically called for placement. Id. at 942 (Significantly, the child in Zvi D. was never placed in the private schoolthe Board of Education merely agreed to pay for his tuition until the review of his classification could be conducted.). Moreover, the Bayonne court also recognized that the placement did not necessarily end in September 1996 because this transition was subject to the satisfaction of fourteen conditions, and the parties disputed whether these conditions had been met. Id. We do not find the reasoning in Zvi D. and Bayonne to be inconsistent. Both cases involved settlement agreements, but only the Bayonne agreement actually placed the student, whereas the Zvi D. agreement only called for tuition reimbursement. Furthermore, the Zvi D. agreement clearly contemplated transition out of the school at the end of the school year, whereas transition to a public school under the Bayonne agreement was subject to the satisfaction of fourteen conditions. We find that K.D.'s case is more analogous to the facts in Zvi D. than those in Bayonne. K.D.'s settlement agreement never called for placement, and only required tuition reimbursement. This is not an insignificant semantic difference. Rather, it was logical for the DOE to settle the case by agreeing to pay tuition for a limited amount of time in order to avoid the costs associated with a full due process hearing. However, it does not follow that, by doing so, the DOE had conducted the detailed evaluation required to determine whether Loveland was the proper educational institution for K.D. under the IDEA. Moreover, K.D.'s settlement agreement also stated that K.D. would transition to a public school at the end of the 2006-07 school year. This fact stands in stark contrast to the conditions that had to be satisfied in the Bayonne agreement prior to public school placement. Although K.D.'s transition was subject to an if appropriate qualifier, the IDEA itself requires that any placement be appropriate and thus, the qualifier cannot be understood as a negotiated limitation on K.D.'s transition. The settlement agreement could only be reasonably read to be time-limited to the 2006-07 school year. The K.D. settlement agreement specified in several places that it applied only to the 2006-07 school year: (1) tuition was to be reimbursed for the 2006-07 school year; (2) DOE's employees were to conduct evaluations of K.D. during the 2006-07 school year; and (3) C.L. was required to consent to observations of K.D., and the release of his educational records at Loveland for the 2006-07 school year. Furthermore, the 2007 IEP proposed by the DOE clearly shows that the DOE did not consider it appropriate for K.D. to remain at Loveland. Thus, the if appropriate language cannot reasonably be read to give C.L. the power to unilaterally decide to keep K.D. at Loveland, and expect the DOE to continue paying tuition. Accordingly, K.D.'s stay put placement is not at Loveland because the March 2007 settlement agreement did not place him there, and was limited to the 2006-07 school year. [2] K.D. next refers us to a Sixth Circuit case, Thomas v. Cincinnati Board of Education, 918 F.2d 618, 626 (6th Cir.1990), for the proposition that where ... the dispute arises before any IEP has been implemented, the `current educational placement' will be the operative placement under which the child is actually receiving instruction at the time the dispute arises. Though this language, read in isolation, may appear helpful to K.D.'s position, a close examination of the case clearly shows that the case is not on point. Thomas involved a child who suffered from severe psychomotor retardation, was prone to seizures, and was required to eat through a feeding tube and breathe through a tracheotomy. Id. at 621. Cincinnati Public Schools originally provided the child with one hour of home training per week, and changed it to one hour of training per day after a change in state funding regulations. Id. at 621-22. The IEP team proposed a placement for the child at an out-of-home program in a nearby school. Id. at 621. However, of necessity, the child had to be transported to school and, before the IEP was implemented, a dispute arose over who would bear the cost of transportation, and whether it would be safe to transport the child in her condition. Id. Thus, at the time the request for a due process hearing was filed, the child was still receiving at-home care. The court held that the child was to continue receiving at-home care as her stay put placement during the pendency of the proceedings. Id. at 626. Thomas differs from K.D.'s situation because the at-home care the child was receiving was provided by the state prior to the IEP dispute, and there was no evidence that this prior agreement was time-limited. We acknowledge that the purpose behind the stay put provision of the IDEA is to maintain the status quo. See, e.g., Thomas, 918 F.2d at 626. In this case, at the time the due process hearing was filed, K.D. had attended Loveland for over a year without the DOE's permission and in spite of numerous letters from the DOE stating that they would not pay for his continued attendance there. Nothing in the stay put provision prevented K.D. from staying at Loveland. Rather, the issue is who is required to pay for the Loveland tuition during the proceedings. Were K.D. to succeed in this case, and were we to conclude that the DOE denied him a FAPE, K.D. may be eligible to receive tuition reimbursement regardless of the stay put provision. See Zvi D., 694 F.2d at 908 n. 8. However, applying the reasoning of both Zvi D. and Bayonne, we hold that Loveland Academy is not K.D.'s stay put placement because the DOE only agreed to pay tuition for the limited 2006-07 school year, and never affirmatively agreed to place K.D. at Loveland.