Opinion ID: 590921
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Review of Factual Support for the Order

Text: 50 Having concluded that the magistrate judge applied the relevant law, all that stands between us and affirmance is to ascertain whether the magistrate judge's application of the law to the facts of this case was clearly erroneous. 25 Reviewing the record before us on appeal, we cannot say that the record contains insufficient support for the magistrate judge's factual findings. 51 There is evidence that Sherri can be appropriately served in the community. A special education hearing officer and an expert from Sherri's School District agree that Sherri can obtain educational services in the School District from which she will be able to obtain educational benefit. The fact that her ability to obtain benefit from community-based services cannot be known for certain until Sherri has been given the opportunity is no argument against giving her that opportunity. 52 Sherri is twenty now. When she turns twenty-two, her eligibility for education and residence at the School for the Blind will terminate. The parties do not contemplate that she would require institutionalization at some other facility thereafter. All parties concede, and the special education hearing officer specifically found, that if Sherri were to remain at the School for the Blind, her progress over the course of the next two years would not be significant. As plaintiff herself points out, Sherri has only made a few months' worth of progress in cognitive age since she entered the School for the Blind fourteen years ago. If she would be able to work in a sheltered workshop and live in a community residence after receiving two more years of free, appropriate education under her IEP at the School for the Blind, as plaintiff claims, surely she will be able to do the same with the education she will receive under the same IEP implemented in her local school district. Plaintiff agrees that Sherri can and should eventually live in the community. It would seem that the time is now. 53 The magistrate judge's frustration with the parties' delay in formulating and implementing a transition plan for Sherri is evident in many of the orders subsequent to February 1991. We share that frustration. The magistrate judge did not designate any particular placement for Sherri, but directed the parties to find appropriate housing and arrange for appropriate educational services in a community setting. In allowing the parties some flexibility to develop a transition plan, the magistrate judge did not intend to provide the parties with unlimited time in which to effect that plan.