Opinion ID: 2598222
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Bickford's First Complaint

Text: Pamela Bickford is the mother of a student once identified by the Anchorage School District as learning disabled. In the fall of 1998, she came to believe that the school district was misusing testing procedures for evaluating special learning disabilities. On October 9, 1998, Bickford mailed a document entitled Complaint and Request for Due Process Hearing to the board and commissioner of education, and to the board and superintendent of the Anchorage School District. The complaint's caption listed eight individuals as plaintiffs, including Bickford, and asserted that the plaintiffs were acting on their own behalf and on behalf of a class of similarly situated persons. The caption named as defendants the Anchorage School Board and School District Superintendent as well as the Alaska State Board of Education and the Alaska Commissioner of Education. Bickford was the only plaintiff who had actually signed the complaint. Bickford's complaint set out twenty separate counts accusing the Anchorage School District of violating IDEA student-evaluation procedures, [11] and of more broadly violating section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, [12] the Americans with Disabilities Act, [13] section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act, [14] and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The complaint sought various forms of relief for these violations, including injunctive relief, costs and fees, and [s]uch other or additional relief as this Court may deem just and proper. Although the format of the complaint, the violations it alleged, the relief it requested, and the formal certificate of service that accompanied it all seemed to suggest that it might have been drafted for filing as a civil court action, the complaint failed to specify where it was actually meant to be filed. After reviewing the complaint, the school district thought that it might be a draft legal complaint but also recognized that it might have been meant in part as a request for a due process hearing under the IDEA. [15] As a precautionary matter, the district appointed a hearing officer to oversee the complaint, as required under applicable regulations governing requests for due process hearings. Bickford later informed the hearing officer that she did not intend to proceed with her due process hearing request, so no hearing was held. [16] Meanwhile, the department had referred Bickford's complaint to the attorney general's office; after reviewing it, Assistant Attorney General Tom Dahl returned it to Bickford with a letter asking for clarification because of several procedural problems that it presents. Dahl described three particulars that needed to be clarified. Dahl began by observing that only Bickford had signed the complaint. He asserted that complaints must be signed by all complainants or by their attorney. Since the state bar association had informed him that Bickford was not an attorney, Dahl pointed out that she was not entitled to bring an action on behalf of anyone other than herself. Next, Dahl noted that no court had been specified in the complaint, but that Bickford had requested injunctive relief under the federal rules of civil procedure. If the complaint was intended to initiate a federal civil proceeding, Dahl asked that Bickford name the federal court she had in mind and clarify what federal question she was presenting. If, on the other hand, Bickford intended the complaint to initiate proceedings either under 34 C.F.R. § 300.506 [mediation procedure] or 4 AAC 52.500 [the state code provision governing IDEA administrative complaints [17] ], Dahl informed her that she would have to restate the claim on behalf of [her] child and [herself] alone, and ask for the state to investigate the complaint as provided in the [latter] regulation. Last, Dahl noted that if Bickford had intended her complaint to initiate a civil action, neither state nor federal courts would allow her to sue the school board without first exhausting administrative procedures. If, on the other hand, Bickford was attempting to request a due process hearing, Dahl claimed that the school district, not the department, was the proper defendant as, under federal law, the state board's role was limited to hearing appeals from local districts' final decisions. Indicating that these deficiencies made it difficult to determine how Bickford wanted to proceed, Dahl informed her that the department would take no further actions unless and until Bickford clarified her intentions. Bickford responded to Dahl's letter with a letter dated December 7, 1998, signed by Bickford and seven other parents, addressing each of Dahl's enumerated points. Bickford acknowledged that she was not an attorney, and she wrote that it had not been her intent to act as one. She noted that a 1993 brochure, Your Rights as the Parent of a Child Who Experiences a Disability, featured a section entitled Complaint Procedure that cite[d] federal regulations and provided: The department will review, investigate and take appropriate action on: 300.662. . . . written complaints alleging that a district or other educational agency is acting contrary to [state] or federal requirements for special education. It was Bickford's understanding, she clarified, that the complaint procedure was informal and parent friendly . . . [t]he form of the complaint and identification of who may submit a complaint not being identified. She then accused the department of having improperly dismiss[ed] her complaint on the grounds that she had failed to satisfy a procedural requirement that neither she nor any of the other parents ever knew existed: [Y]our dismissal of our complaint without giving us the opportunity to satisfy your requirement that all persons party to the complaint submit an actual signature acknowledging their joining the complaint, sets out a standard of which we were not informed. Second, Bickford clarified that no court had been identified in her complaint because the State [IDEA Administrative-]Complaint Procedures, 34 CFR §§ 300.660-300.662, was the intended jurisdiction of our complaint. (She did not acknowledge, though, that this was the first time she had explicitly invoked 34 C.F.R. §§ 300.660-.662 (1998)). Finally, Bickford claimed that the department was a proper defendant in her action because the department qualified as an other educational agency as the term was used in 34 C.F.R. §§ 300.660-.662 (1998), and because the state had a federal duty to monitor local compliance with the IDEA. Bickford summed up by asserting that her action was a class action, that Dahl had failed to acknowledge that the state had mandated complaint procedure[s], and that she and the other parents believed that they had exhausted the administrative remedies available to them. Based on these assertions, Bickford indicated that she would not resubmit a clarified complaint to the department but instead planned to file this complaint in District Court in Anchorage. Evidently, Bickford did file a suit against the department and school board in the United States District Court for the District of Alaska; apparently the suit was dismissed and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit eventually affirmed the dismissal. [18]