This paper will summarize the legal issues, reveal the outcomes, and formulate a rationale for how the court reached its decision in three separate special education policy reviews. The cases to be reviewed are; 1) Doug C v. Hawaii, 2) PV v. Philadelphia and 3) Phyllene W. v. Huntsville City, AL, Board of Education. These cases will shape the futures of children with special needs and how they interact within their schools. Each case deals with laws that are already in place such as the; 1) ADA (American with Disabilities Act), 2) IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Act) and 3) FAPE (Free Appropriate Education). The ruling for the Doug C. v Hawaii took place in the Ninth Circuit determining how parental participation is to take place at IEP (Individual Education Program) meetings (Wright, 2013).
In December of 2009, Doug C.’s father, Spencer, asked for a special hearing against the state of Hawaii Department of Education because a prior IEP meeting was held without him. That hearing for Doug was lost as he had no representation of any kind at this meeting and he did not attend as he was very ill. Doug C. had an IEP earlier and was placed in a private special education school since he was in the fifth grade. The decisions made by the Department of Education were determined without parental or Doug’s participation. The Department determined that Doug should attend regular high school. Spencer appealed to the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court. The Department of Education argued that if the IEP meeting was not held on the date arranged the annual review deadline would pass and there would be a break in services for Doug. Five decisions regarding IEP meetings were decided at the US Court of Appeals (Wright, 2013).
The first issue was, does the school need to hold IEP meetings before the annual review deadline? If for some reason the meeting does not take place prior to the review deadline, is there a break in child services until something new in the IEP is decided? It was decided that even though a meeting deadline is not met, there would be no break is the child’s services. The second issue was if there are conflicts in scheduling an IEP meeting, who has priority, the school or parents? The ruling determined that the parent’s schedule takes priority, not the schools. The third issue was can the school fix the problem by having a second IEP meeting within 30 days of the first? The court ruled no. There needs to be parental participation in the first meeting to help develop the appropriate program for the child. The program is developed based partly on parental participation. The fourth issue was if the school violates the first part of providing FAPE does the reviewing court need to determine if the school also violated the second part of the decision process which is whether or not the school properly determined if the child needs educational benefits. The decision was no. If the court determines that the first part of the decision was made against the law than the second part does not need to be judged. Finally, if a Due Process Hearing Officer and a U.S. District Court Judge determine that the parent’s lack of attending an IEP meeting did not deny the child with FAPE, what is the U.S. Court of Appeals to do? The answer is to determine whether or not there was an obvious mistake. In this case, “a school district is to include the parents in an IEP meeting unless they affirmatively refuse to attend” (Wright, 2013).
In determining the outcome of Doug C. v Hawaii, the court revealed two facts. They needed to decide if when a child is given FAPE, they need to determine if the state is in compliance with the law, and two, whether the IEP is developed in a reasonable manner to help the child. In this case the court determined that compliance with the law was not met and therefore the ruling was reversed without need to consider the second part of the ruling (Wright, 2013). The second case is PV v. Philadelphia.
PV v. Philadelphia is a situation where a class action suit was filed by parents of children with Autism that attended school in Philadelphia. The parents of these children say their children located in grades kindergarten to 8th grade with autism are transferred without any notice to them. This process is called “upper leveling.” These children are placed in different classrooms based on what the school district determines. There are three classrooms available for autistic children and they are grouped as Kindergarten to second grade, third through fifth grade and sixth through eighth grade. These groups do not always exist at each school so when a child progresses to the next level they are sent to the school or building where the next appropriate class is located without formally notifying parents (Davis, 2013).
The parents of these children are asking for formal notifications within a reasonable timeframe and some input into the decision making. Parents say that the process of “upper-leveling” is violating their IDEA and chapter 14 of the Pennsylvania Code since it happens without parental participation. They also feel it violates 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the ADA, because the sole reason for the transfer is that their children have autism. In this situation the courts needed to determine three issues: 1) was there or could there be true injury due to the situation, 2) can the potential injury be directly connected to the complaint, and 3) is it a plausible fact that a positive decision will change the injury. The school district stated that since there was no actual injury pursuant to the case and that there is no evidence of reduced academic progress or increase in poor behavior, they have done no wrong. Parents disagree in that any great change for an autistic child causes disruption and difficulty in their lives (Davis, 2013).
The final court decision covered three different issues in the case. The first part is that the parents have a right to continue their case. The second is that “upper-leveling” kids violates the procedural safeguards in the IDEA and prevents the parents from being able to actively contribute to the decisions made concerning educational assignment for their children. The third section is that the courts determined that “upper-leveling” does not violate the ADA or 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. There were some for and against findings granted for the third part. The last case is Phyllene W. v. Huntsville City, AL.
The case of Phyllene W. v. Huntsville City, AL took place in the 11th Circuit court of Appeals in 2015. Phyllene W. is the mother of a special needs child who will be represented as M.W. The IDEA was developed to give all children with disabilities an education with special services available to them that may be needed. The case is that the Board of Education in Huntsville City did not evaluate M.W. when they were shown facts that M.W. was hard of hearing. Due to the fact that the board did not obtain medical information they did not provide M.W. with a FAPE. There was no reasonable IEP developed and therefore no appropriate services were rendered (Phyllene, 2015).
M.W. underwent many surgeries from the time she was a small child. By the second grade she was evaluated and determined to need special services at school. It was also determined that she had ADHD. M.W. received special tutoring that her mother paid for beginning in the second grade. An IEP was finally developed for M.W. just prior to third grade which would grant her 30 minutes of small group instruction each day provided by the school system. At this point M.W. was reading and doing math at a first grade level. The school provided a few more services for M.W. throughout the years, like longer amounts of time to take exams, but when a private school examined M.W. they determined she had dyslexia and suggested that her school provide “direct dyslexia intervention.” Unfortunately the Huntsville school chose not to provide this service and by the sixth grade M.W. was seriously behind.
Over the next year up until 10th grade M.W. struggled with school despite a tutor and some special education assistance. The school was often asked to give her a hearing test, but she was regularly denied. Finally in the 10th grade Phyllene took M.W. out of public school. Phyllene eventually brought a case against the school district.
The courts needed to determine whether there was a case based on two factors; 1) did the state act in alignment with IDEA regulations and 2) was an IEP developed that was appropriate for the child based on IDEA regulations. The other ensuing issue was whether or not a suitable set of services were developed for M.W.’s education based on FAPE guidelines. Phyllene faced the courts with the facts that under IDEA the school district did not make a thorough and judicious evaluation of her daughter’s needs in particular regarding her hearing issues. The courts concluded that the school board had adequate information while M.W. was in school to provide a more appropriate IEP in regards to her lack of communication skills and hearing. Therefore they did not follow IDEA regulations by supplying an appropriate IEP (Phyllene, 2015).
In these three cases the plaintiffs all received a verdict in their favor. Even though some of the cases had to make appeals to a higher court they all eventually won. There are many specific circumstances involved in special education cases and each case needs to be evaluated on its own according to IDEA, ADA and FAPE regulations. All children have a right to good education and some children need a little extra help.
References
Davis, Legrome, D. (2013). PV v. Philadelphia. Case 2:11-cv-04027-LDD Document 74. Retrieved from http://www.wrightslaw.com/law/caselaw/2013/case.pv.v.philadelphia.pdf
Wright, Peter., & Wright, Pamela. (2013). Doug C. v Hawaii analysis. Wrightslaw. Retrieved from http://www.wrightslaw.com/law/art/dougc.hawaii.pwanalysis.htm
(2015). Phyllene W. v. Huntsville City, AL. Wrightslaw. Retrieved from http://www.wrightslaw.com/law/caselaw/2015/11th.phyllene.v.huntsville.pdf
