Opinion ID: 770963
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Procedural History: Administrative Hearings

Text: 13 An impartial hearing as mandated by IDEA, see 20 U.S.C. 1415(b)(2) (1994); N.Y. Educ. Law 4404(1) (McKinney Supp. 1999) (amended 1995), was held on April 23, 1998 to determine whether M.S. was entitled to tuition reimbursement under the test set forth in School Committee of Burlington v. Department of Education, 471 U.S. 359, 369-70, 85 L. Ed. 2d 385, 105 S. Ct. 1996 (1985) (holding that reimbursement is authorized when the proposed IEP is inappropriate and the private school placement is appropriate). The classification of S.S. as learning disabled was not disputed during this hearing. Testimony was received from the CSE chairperson; one of S.S.'s teachers in the PEARLS program; the special education teacher coordinator at the Stephen Gaynor School; and M.S. 14 The impartial hearing officer (IHO) found that M.S. was not entitled to tuition reimbursement on two alternative grounds: that the School Board was providing S.S. with an appropriate education; and that the program at the Stephen Gaynor School was inappropriate for S.S.'s needs. 15 M.S. appealed the decision of the IHO to a state review officer (SRO) at the New York State Education Department. See 20 U.S.C. 1415(c) (1994); N.Y. Educ. Law 4404(2) (McKinney 1995). The SRO affirmed the denial of reimbursement on the ground that though the School Board's IEP was inadequate and inappropriate, the education afforded at the Stephen Gaynor School was also inappropriate. 16 As to the appropriateness of the education furnished by the School Board, the SRO found that the IEP for S.S.'s fourth-grade year (1997-98) inadequately described S.S.'s needs and the extent of his disability: Although [S.S.'s] IEP has what appears to be a series of computer generated statements with respect to his academic, social and physical development and management needs, those statements do not include adequate objective data to establish a baseline from which [S.S.'s] progress could be measured during . . . 1997-98. The SRO also found that the IEP's annual goals and short-term objectives were too vague to provide [S.S.'s] teacher with direction about the CSE's expectations. For example, despite the fact that there is no dispute about [S.S.'s] very weak spelling skills, his IEP goals and objectives do not address his encoding (spelling) difficulties. In summary, the SRO found that the School Board failed to meet its burden of proof with respect to the appropriateness of the educational placement which it offered to [S.S.] for the 1997-98 school year because of its failure to adequately describe his educational needs and to construct IEP goals and objectives which specifically addressed those needs. 17 As to whether M.S. had met his burden of establishing the appropriateness of the Stephen Gaynor School, the SRO found, first, that M.S. had not demonstrated that his son's special education needs were addressed at the Stephen Gaynor School; S.S.'s reading level had not improved at the school and his spelling level had declined. Second, M.S. had not shown that S.S.'s placement at the Stephen Gaynor School was consistent with the requirement that children with disabilities be placed in the least restrictive environment. The SRO was not persuaded that [S.S.'s] management needs were so severe as to require the highly restrictive placement in a private school. Similarly, while [S.S.] had academic deficits, he had only recently been receiving resource room services and was benefitting from those services when the CSE recommended that he continue to receive resource room services.