Court Opinion

ID: 9629296
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:40:06.852278+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:17.499640
License: Public Domain

ROVNER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
With respect, I believe that two procedural flaws in the IEP process compel reversal of the judgment. The ALJ found that before school officials met with Mrs. Hjortness to begin discussing the 2004-05 IEP, the school district already had “made up its mind to place the Student in a small group setting in the District schools under whatever IEP was formulated.” R. 1 at 24; id. at 16 ¶ 32; see also id. at 23. The ALJ also found that most of the goals and short-term objectives incorporated into the IEP were determined after the April 22, *10672004 meeting attended by Joel’s mother and therefore were arrived at without the parents’ input. Id. at 16 ¶¶ 33-35; id. at 23. Neither of these factual findings was clearly erroneous, and together they amply support the ALJ’s conclusion that Joel’s parents were deprived of meaningful participation in the IEP process and that Joel was deprived of a free appropriate public education.
The IDEA’S presumption in favor of educating a disabled student with his nondis-abled peers (see ante at 1066, citing 20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(5)(A)) does not permit a school district to circumvent the procedures that Congress has mandated by predetermining that a disabled student should be placed in one of its own schools. A placement decision is to be based on the IEP. 34 C.F.R. § 300.116(b)(2) (formerly § 300.552). The IEP is the “primary vehicle” for implementing the underlying goals of the statute. Honig v. Doe, 484 U.S. 305, 311, 108 S.Ct. 592, 597, 98 L.Ed.2d 686 (1988); see also id. at 311, 108 S.Ct. at 598 (Congress “envision[ed] the IEP as the centerpiece of the statute’s education delivery system for disabled children.”). It is the IEP that assesses the student’s current educational performance, articulates a set of annual goals and short-term objectives in furtherance of those goals, and identifies the special education and other services necessary to help the student achieve those goals. 20 U.S.C. § 1414(d)(1)(A); Honig, 484 U.S. at 311, 108 S.Ct. at 597-98. A placement decision that is made before the IEP is drafted renders what Congress meant to be “the centerpiece of the statute’s education delivery system for disabled children,” id. at 311, 108 S.Ct. at 598, a meaningless formality. See Bd. of Educ. of Township High Sch. Dist. No. 211 v. Ross, 486 F.3d 267, 274 (7th Cir.2007) (if it were true that IEP meetings with parents “were nothing but an elaborate effort to ratify a decision that the District had already made without their input ... then it would violate the IDEA”); Deal v. Hamilton County Bd. of Educ., 392 F.3d 840, 859 (6th Cir.2004); Spielberg v. Henrico County Public Schools, 853 F.2d 256, 259 (4th Cir.1988). Predetermination of a child’s placement necessarily renders irrelevant what happens next in terms of meetings between school officials and the child’s parents. Even if Joel’s parents had been more cooperative with District officials in the IEP process, as my colleagues suggest they should have been, see ante at 1065, it would have made no difference given that the District, as the ALJ found, had already decided where to place him. Whatever opportunities Mr. and Mrs. Hjortness were given to participate in the development of the IEP, and however substantively appropriate the IEP was on its face, the IEP process in this case served merely to justify a placement decision that the District made unilaterally before IEP meetings with the parents were convened. That is exactly what this court in Ross (and our sister circuits in Deal and Spielberg ) said is forbidden. 486 F.3d at 274.
Likewise, an IEP that is drafted largely in the absence of a student’s parents is not the product of the interactive process that Congress required. See, e.g., W.G. v. Bd. of Trustees of Target Range School Dist. No. 23, 960 F.2d 1479, 1485 (9th Cir.1992). The fact that Joel’s parents were involved in the process prior to the development of the IEP (see ante at 1065) is beside the point. The fact is, they were not actually involved in preparing the IEP, nor was the full IEP team reconvened for the parents’ input once school officials had completed the plan. It is no answer to say that Joel’s parents did not object to the ex parte drafting of the IEP once it was presented to them. See R. 33 at 14. That was not their burden. See W.G., 960 F.2d at 1485. As the ALJ rightly observed, “it was the obligation of the District to recognize the *1068procedural flaw[] and offer the Parents the opportunity to participate meaningfully in the development of the annual goals and objectives, and thereafter to discuss placement under the IEP as then appropriately developed.” R. 1 at 23.
Because the procedure followed by the school district in this case was inconsistent with the core goals and requirements of the IDEA, I would reverse the district court’s judgment and sustain the ALJ’s determination that Joel’s parents are entitled to reimbursement for the tuition they paid for Joel’s private education in the 2004-05 school year.
I respectfully dissent.