Court Opinion

ID: 9774482
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:22:07.329057+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:09.046011
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION BY
Senior Judge KELLEY.
I respectfully dissent. The Majority’s opinion, while economical in terms of these parties’ protracted history, ignores the plain statutory mandate at issue, finds waiver where none has been raised or equitably exists, and potentially eviscerates the statutory review scheme governing IEPs and GIEPs without regard to the annual review rights of parents thereunder.
I first note that the Majority finds waiver where none has been raised, and where none can be found in an equitable reading of the record as a whole.1 The record does indeed establish that D.Z., in her admittedly self-disadvantaged position as a pro se party, never directly objected to the Hearing Officer’s failure to place a record statement regarding an otherwise qualified interpreter’s ability and professional conduct knowledge pursuant to 2 Pa.C.S. § 563(b)(2) at the precise time of the respective interpreters’ qualification. However, D.Z.’s repeated and persistent objections throughout the record to the qualifications and efficacy of the two interpreters can easily be read as asserting the substance of such an objection, if not the proper form.2 See, e.g., Reproduced Record (R.R.) at RR-3, RR-20.
*739Secondly on this issue, the Majority states later in its opinion that due process protections are fully afforded to a parent by the General Assembly’s provision of the statutory scheme at issue, including Section 568, allowing for interpreters when needed. This is a recognition of due process protection with which I agree. Finding a waiver of the statute’s plain and clear mandate for the record statement required by Section 568(b)(2) requires, in the context of the instant challenges, a subsequent examination of the actual effectiveness of the interpreters as challenged by D.Z., as the Majority again properly recognizes. However, the Majority then proceeds to abbreviate any such analysis, in its address of the interpreters’ effectiveness, on the basis that D.Z. failed to argue that any actual prejudice resulted from the alleged due process violations. I disagree with this analytical progression on two bases.
Any conclusion by the Majority that D.Z. has failed to show any actual prejudice resulting from the Hearing Officer’s exclusion of the statement required by Section 563(2)(b) simply ignores the right implicated: an opportunity to be heard. The record is replete, indeed on nearly every page of the transcripts, with D.Z.’s repeated insistence that she is literally not being heard as a result of the improperly qualified interpreters’ efforts. I can conceive of no more obvious and self-evident actual prejudice shown, in the context of a due process violation allegation, than a record replete with assertions that a party is literally not being heard. In my view, the actual prejudice embodied in not being properly interpreted to the Hearing Officer, in light of the use of statutorily unqualified interpreters, is so obvious as to require no official designation thereof within a brief to this Court, given the record to the matter sub judice.3
As such, any analysis of the effectiveness of the interpreters challenged herein must begin with an examination of the legal qualifications of the interpreters at issue, which qualifications are defined, in terms of the statute’s provision, quite plainly. 2 Pa.C.S. § 101; 2 Pa.C.S. § 563. Under this analysis, as a matter of law, the interpreters are inarguably not qualified without a statement on the record made by the Hearing Officer as to the interpreters’ abilities, and as to their reading, understanding, and agreement to abide by the applicable code of professional conduct as mandated by the General Assembly, without exception. Id. As a matter of law, then, and without any need for any further or actual showing of actual prejudice, even a perfunctory examination of the interpreters’ effectiveness reveals that they are *740both not qualified to interpret in a Pennsylvania court absent the record statement required by 2 Pa.C.S. § 563(b)(2). Without such basic legal qualification as mandated by statute, the interpreters cannot be seen as effective as a foundational matter, notwithstanding the interpreters’ subsequent efforts in the prior proceedings.
Next, I note my disagreement with the Majority’s dismissal of D.Z.’s appropriate design issues regarding the educational plans that have been carried over to subsequent academic years, in the face of the parties’ inability to agree on subsequent academic year plans and D.Z.’s concomitant challenges. It is beyond dispute— and D.Z. tacitly admits, in her brief to this Court — that the issue of the appropriate design of Student’s IEP and GIEP for the time period from December, 2006, through the completion of the 2007-2008 school year, was litigated in the proceedings that culminated in the previously litigated 2007 IEP Decision and the 2008 GIEP Decision. A review of those prior decisions reveals that all four of the res judicata factors listed above are satisfied, in relation to the academic periods addressed in those two prior proceedings. R.R. at RR-150-173. Accordingly, I agree that the Hearing Officer did not err in excluding the issues of IEP and GIEP appropriate design for the school years including, and prior to, the 2007-2008 academic year. Further, the Hearing Officer correctly did not exclude the issue of the implementation of the IEP and GIEP for those school years, as the issue of implementation was not adjudicated in either the 2007 IEP Decision or the 2008 GIEP Decision.
The Hearing Officer’s exclusion of the appropriate design of Student’s IEP and GIEP for the 2008-2009 school year, however, addresses an issue that was not the subject of the prior IEP and GIEP Decisions. The IEP and GIEP that were the subjects of the 2007 IEP Decision, and the 2008 GIEP Decision, respectively, remained in effect for the 2008-2009 school year. The parties could not agree to any newly designed or proposed IEP or GIEP for the 2008-2009 school year, which D.Z. repeatedly rejected. As the Majority correctly notes, a prior IEP and GIEP in effect at the time of the rejection of, and/or subsequent challenge to, newly proposed plans remains in effect during the pen-dency of any such rejection and/or challenge. Section 1415(j) of IDEA, 20 U.S.C. § 1415(j); 22 Pa.Code § 16.63(a). I emphasize, however, that while the prior IEP and GIEP remained in effect in the absence of any approval of an IEP and/or GIEP for the school year 2008-2009 pursuant to IDEA and Pennsylvania regulation, no issues involving the implementation or appropriateness of the IEP and GIEP for the 2008-2009 school year were addressed or decided in the 2007 IEP Decision, or in the 2008 GIEP Decision. See R.R. at RR-157-173.
In its brief to this Court, the District concedes that the 2007 IEP Decision and the 2008 GIEP Decision addressed only the appropriateness of the respective educational plans through the conclusion of the 2007-2008 academic years. Without specific argument addressed towards the 2008-2009 school year, the District merely argues that the prior litigation of the IEP and GIEP issues for prior school years renders any argument directed towards Student’s IEP and GIEP4 barred under the res judicata doctrine. I disagree.
*741A review of the 2007 IEP Decision and the 2008 GIEP Decision plainly reveals that neither of those cases involved, expressly or impliedly, the implementation or appropriate design of Student’s IEP and GIEP for the 2008-2009 school year. As such, in relation to the 2008-2009 school year, neither the identity of the thing sued upon, nor the identity of the cause of action, are identical with the prior 2007 IEP and 2008 GIEP Decisions, and res judicata does not bar their address. Montour School District v. S.T., 805 A.2d 29 (Pa. Cmwlth.2002), petition for allowance of appeal denied, 573 Pa. 660, 820 A.2d 163 (2003).
I would reject the District’s argument that the mere fact that the prior IEP and GIEP continued to remain in effect as a matter of law renders the prior IEP and GIEP un-challengeable for the 2008-2009 academic year in light of the 2007 IEP and 2008 GIEP Decisions. The District concedes that “educational programming is designed to evolve over time,” and it is well established that both federal and Pennsylvania law provide for the review, or challenge, of an IEP and/or GIEP for every individual academic year, notwithstanding any prior approval thereof for prior years, in the absence of annual parental approval thereof.5 Accordingly, the Hearing Officer erred as a matter of law in excluding the issues of IEP and GIEP implementation and appropriateness in relation to the 2008-2009 academic year, and the doctrine of res judicata does not bar the instant challenge.
Additionally, one potential example illustrates the frustration that can be wrought to the legislative educational review scheme by the Majority’s casting of any carryover educational plan as unassailable in regards to subsequent academic years. Hypothetically, the Majority’s holding enables a potentiality wherein an education plan tailored to a younger student — e.g., a plan that concludes that a 4th grade reading level is appropriately designed for a 3rd grade student — remains unassailable in the face of subsequent plan challenges in consecutive academic years, resulting in an application of the res judicata doctrine impliedly concluding that the 4th grade reading level remains appropriately designed for a 4th, 5th, or even 12th grade student of previously established advanced reading ability. Such a result is absurd, in addition to frustrating and indeed possibility eviscerating the federal and Pennsylvania provisions for challenges to the design of education plans on a timely, annual basis, allowing for the natural progression of students’ academic growth.
Finally, I object to the Majority’s failure to address D.Z.’s final issue, challenging the exclusion of certain witnesses and testimony by the Hearing Officer, on the basis that D.Z. failed to make an offer of proof to the Hearing Officer as to the substance of those -witnesses’ potential testimony. The Hearing Officer excluded 11 of 23 witnesses via email ruling, and without receiving argument on the issue by any party. If the Hearing Officer made those unilateral exclusions without knowledge (or argument thereon) as to the substance *742of that to which they would testify, that could constitute an abuse of discretion, given that lack of any foundational knowledge as a basis for exclusion. If the Hearing Officer did indeed have some basis regarding the witnesses’ testimony upon which to base his exclusion, then an offer of proof from D.Z. was not necessary, and the exclusion should be addressed herein. Either a basis for the Hearing Officer’s exclusion existed (which basis would also constitute an offer of proof, and would provide this Court with a foundation upon which to review the exclusion), or the Hearing Officer abused his discretion in excluding the witnesses without basis upon an offer of proof. The record contains no indication that an offer of proof was requested, or an opportunity therefor provided to D.Z., by the Hearing Officer at any time prior to his exclusion via email ruling.
I concur in the Majority’s remaining analysis not addressed above.
I would vacate and remand for further proceedings, on the primary basis of the Hearing Officer’s error as a matter of law in failing to place the statutorily mandated statement regarding otherwise qualified interpreters upon the record, as required by 2 Pa.C.S. § 563(2)(b).

. I emphasize that neither the District, nor the Hearing Officer, has raised the issue of a potential waiver by D.Z.

. I also find the Majority's citation to the Federal Court Interpreters Act, and precedents construing the same, unavailing and unpersuasive. The Court Interpreters Act *739contains no provision equivalent to that of our General Assembly's statutory requirement that a record statement of qualification be made as a mandatory prerequisite to qualifying an "otherwise qualified interpreter” (which type of interpreter also has no equivalent under the Federal Act). Further, the Court Interpreters Act contains an express provision providing for the waiver of an objection to the certification or performance of an interpreter; no such express waiver provision exists under the statutory scheme passed by Pennsylvania’s General Assembly. Hence, I find the support drawn by the Majority from the entirely dissimilar Federal Court Interpreters unpersuasive.

. I also object to the Majority’s conclusion that D.Z.'s perceived failure to show any actual prejudice in light of the Hearing Officer’s failure to make the mandated record statement regarding the purported otherwise qualified interpreters renders the Hearing Officer’s failure harmless error. Given the fundamental nature of the due process rights implicated herein — namely, and quite literally, the opportunity to be heard — a finding of harmless error serves to eviscerate the plain mandate of Section 563(b)(2), and by extension, eviscerates the very due process rights embodied by that Section as recognized by the Majority.

. The District concedes that D.Z. challenged both the appropriateness, and the implementation, of Student’s IEP and GIEP.

. See 34 C.F.R. § 300.324 (2006) (providing for, at a minimum, annual review of a student’s IEP); 34 C.F.R. § 300.507 (2006) (providing for a parental due process complaint to challenge an educational agency’s refusal to change the identification, evaluation, and/or the educational placement of a student subject to an IEP); 22 Pa.Code § 16.32'(provid-ing for, at a minimum, annual GIEP development meetings, including at the request of a parent); 22 Pa.Code § 16.63 (providing for a parental due process hearing on the issues of the identification, evaluation, and/or the educational placement of a student subject to a GIEP).