Opinion ID: 3046529
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Change in Educational Placement

Text: The principal question in the appeal at No. 07-2440 is whether the District Court erred in concluding that the School District’s unilateral relocation of J.R. out of the resource room and into an inclusion classroom during the pendency of proceedings 10 amounts to a change in his educational placement within the meaning of the IDEA’s “stay-put” provision, 20 U.S.C. § 1415(j). Section 1415(j) provides, in relevant part, that “during the pendency of any proceedings conducted pursuant to this section, unless the State or local educational agency and the parents otherwise agree, the child shall remain in the then-current educational placement of the child . . . until all such proceedings have been completed.” The Supreme Court has explained that the main purpose of the stay-put provision is “to strip schools of the unilateral authority they had traditionally employed to exclude disabled students . . . from school.” Honig v. Doe, 484 U.S. 305, 323 (1988). The IDEA does not define the term “educational placement” and thus “identifying a change in this placement is something of an inexact science.” Bd. of Educ. of Cmty. High Sch. Dist. No. 218 v. Ill. State Bd. of Educ., 103 F.3d 545, 548 (7th Cir. 1996). Nonetheless, our precedent provides some guidance in this regard. In DeLeon v. Susquehanna Community School District, 747 F.2d 149 (3d Cir. 1984), a case relied on heavily by the District Court, we discussed our understanding of what constitutes a “change in educational placement” in the context of a predecessor statute to the IDEA. As we explained in that case, “[t]he question of what constitutes a change in educational placement is, necessarily, fact specific” and thus, “in determining whether a given modification in a child’s school day should be considered a ‘change in educational placement,’” the “touchstone” is whether the modification “is likely to affect in some significant way the child’s learning experience.” Id. at 153. 11 Here, the District Court properly focused its inquiry on whether the move to an inclusion classroom was likely to significantly affect J.R.’s ability to learn. Reviewing the administrative record, the District Court found that it contained “no evidence that the move to an inclusion classroom was likely to affect [J.R.’s] learning experience in any ‘significant way.’ . . . The School District provided the same educational services to [J.R.] on a daily basis, with the same special education teacher, but in a different room.” The District Court also accepted the sparse findings made during the administrative proceedings. Having reviewed the record, we conclude that the District Court’s findings were not clearly erroneous and that it did not err in concluding that J.R.’s relocation did not amount to a change in his educational placement within the meaning of the stay-put provision. J.R.’s parents assert that the District Court, in reaching its decision, misapplied the modified de novo standard of review by according due weight to the hearing officer’s decision instead of the appeals panel’s decision. We disagree. It is not at all clear that the District Court deferred to the hearing officer’s findings to the exclusion of those of the appeals panel. The District Court explicitly stated that it had considered the decisions of both the hearing officer and the appeals panel and that it was accepting the “factual findings made during the state administrative proceedings,” not simply those of the hearing officer. Indeed, the District Court clearly viewed the appeals panel’s findings, insofar as it made any, as compatible with those of the hearing officer, and we concur: 12 Nothing in the record indicates that the appeals panel had a view of the underlying facts, or of the credibility of any witness, that differed in a significant way from that of the hearing officer. To the contrary, as the District Court noted, the appeals panel apparently accepted the hearing officer’s findings but reached a different legal conclusion based on those findings. Nor is there any indication that the District Court took a significantly different view of the underlying facts. Inasmuch as the issue before the District Court was one of law, it did not misapply the modified de novo standard of review. Cf. Pardini v. Allegheny Intermediate Unit, 420 F.3d 181, 192 n.13 (3d Cir. 2005) (Pardini I) (noting that “the interpretation of § 1415(j) . . . is a purely legal one”); Drinker v. Colonial Sch. Dist., 78 F.3d 859, 865 (3d Cir. 1996) (holding that the question of what constitutes a student’s “current educational placement” is one of law).