Opinion ID: 203107
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Incompleteness of the IEP.

Text: In this case, the district court determined that the October 18 IEP was not final because the parents had disrupted the IEP process midstream. Five Town, 2007 WL 494994, at . Having made that finding, the court proceeded to consider information outside the IEP to assure itself that the School District's partially formulated position was consistent with its responsibilities to A.S. under the IDEA. See id. It concluded that, had the parents continued to cooperate and allowed the School District to fill in the gaps, the result would have been a satisfactory IEP that provided A.S. with a FAPE. See id. at . The parents' primary challenge to this conclusion contests the finding that the IEP was incomplete. In that regard, they point out that the School District's special education director, Cindy Foreman, stated during the October 20 PET meeting that the October 18 IEP was final. Based largely on that utterance, the parents assert that the district court's inquiry should have been restricted as a matter of law to the four corners of the October 18 IEP. The School District rejoins that Foreman's comment cannot be taken literally, that the October 18 IEP was obviously incomplete, and that the district court acted appropriately in looking beyond the four corners of that document. The parents cannot be heard to complain about the incompleteness of the IEP, the School District adds, because their refusal to cooperate in the IEP process obstructed the development of a full-fledged IEP. The district court, like the hearing officer, resolved this contretemps in favor of the School District. As a matter of fact, we discern no clear error in that ruling: on its face, the October 18 IEP was manifestly incomplete. While it contained the main components of an individualized plan, it was missing several subsidiary components (such as the behavioral support and crisis management plans). On this record, the district court's finding that the IEP was incomplete was virtually inevitable. Foreman's comment that the IEP was final does not require a different result. Taken in context, that remark does not seem to mean what the parents suggest. Conversation is not trigonometry, and in informal settings spoken language is rarely used in mathematically precise ways. In that connection, we have acknowledged that words are like chameleons; they frequently have different shades of meaning depending upon the circumstances. United States v. Romain, 393 F.3d 63, 74 (1st Cir.2004). Here, the record considered as a whole plainly indicates that while the main components of the IEP (including the School District's decision to accommodate A.S.'s needs in a non-residential setting) may have been final in mid-October, the IEP most, assuredly was not. Given the obvious gaps in the IEP, it would have been absurd for the district court to have treated Foreman's awkward locution as sufficient to transmogrify a partially completed IEP into a fully completed one, [3] Therefore, even in those jurisdictions that have adopted the four corners rule, the rule would not apply.