Lessard v. Wilton-Lyndeborough Coop. Sch. Dist., No. 07-1860 (1st Cir. Feb. 25, 2008)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (MA, ME, NH, RI, P.R.) has ruled that a New Hampshire school district’s failure to have a completed and signed individualized education program (IEP) in place at the beginning of the school year did not violate the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) because it was attributable to the parents’ own intransigence and obstruction. The appeals court affirmed a lower court’s finding that the school district was exonerated of the delay in implementing an IEP, which it completed in August, where the parent refused to identify the concerns that kept her from agreeing to the plan. Stephanie Lessard, who suffers from moderate mental retardation and other mental and physical disabilities, received an IEP from Wilton-Lyndeborough Cooperative School District (WLCSD). When a dispute arose between Stephanie’s parents and WLCSD staff over methodology to teach her literacy, the parents refused to sign the IEP. After a second meeting, they refused to detail their specific objections to IEP. Following a third meeting the parents again refused to sign the IEP, prompting WLCSD to request a due process hearing to determine the IEP’s validity. The hearing officer ruled that the IEP had no procedural or substantive defects and ordered it placed into effect. The parents sued in U.S. district court, seeking to overturn the decision and to receive compensatory education services for Stephanie based on WLCSD’s failure to provide her with a free appropriate public education (FAPE). The district court upheld the hearing officer.
The First Circuit affirmed. The appeals court found that there were neither procedural nor substantive violations of IDEA that resulted in Stephanie’s being denied a FAPE. The court rejected the parents’ argument that WLCSD’s failure to include either a transition or behavioral plan in the IEP offered at the first meeting constituted a procedural violation of IDEA. Having determined that a completed IEP was available at the start of school year, the court concluded that the failure to implement it was no procedural violation because “a parent's obstruction of the IEP process, caused by his or her unreasonable delay in acting upon a completed IEP, can relieve a school system from its obligation to have an assented-to IEP in place at the start of the school year.” The court found that the facts of the case presented “a paradigmatic example of a situation in which a delay in having a signed IEP in place is fairly laid at the parents' doorstep.” When presented with the completed IEP, the court observed, the parents withheld their signatures and forced two additional meetings in which they refused the school district’s entreaties to explain their specific objections to the proffered IEP.
Turning to the parents’ substantive objections, the appeals court broke them down into four segments. First, in the area of transition services they argued that the substantive standard for FAPE established in Hendrick Hudson Bd. of Educ. v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176 (1982) was supplanted by the 1997 amendments to the IDEA. Specific when Congress raised the bar for IEP transition services, directing that those services must result in actual and substantial progress toward integrating disabled children into society. The First Circuit found that its own existing precedent foreclosed this contention, finding that it “had no support in the text of the amendments and that no other court of appeals, post-1997, had exhibited a willingness to scuttle the Rowley standard.” Second, the parents claimed WLCSD’s chosen methodology for improving Stephanie’s literacy failed to provide her with a FAPE because superior methodologies were available. The court declined to enter the debate over educational methodologies, citing Justice Rehnquist’s admonition in Rowley that courts lack the “specialized knowledge and experience" needed to resolve "persistent and difficult questions of educational policy.” Third, the parents objected to the transition services provided. The court determined that “the district court did not clearly err in finding the panoply of transition services adequate.” Fourth, the court disposed of the parents’ objection to the alleged inadequacy of the IEP's behavioral plan on the grounds that no behavioral plan was required for purposes of this IEP.
Lessard v. Wilton-Lyndeborough Coop. Sch. Dist., No. 07-1860 (1st Cir. Feb. 25, 2008)
[Editor’s Note: The Seventh Circuit (IL, IN, WI) also recently ruled that “parents’ intransigence to block an IEP that yields a result contrary to the one they seek does not amount to a violation of the procedural requirements of the IDEA.” See below.]
NSBA School Law pages on Hjortness v. Neehah Joint Sch. Dist.