Two northern Virginia families asked a federal appeals court in Richmond to step into the process used to support special needs students in the state’s school system. The parents claim the system is designed for their complaints to fail.
The Fairfax County parents claim the school division and the Virginia Department of Education’s Individuals with Disabilities Education Act program, known as IDEA, failed to offer proper Free Appropriate Public Education, or FAPE, plans for their children. They also say the system the state uses to hear appeals from parents is influenced by those in charge of the state’s IDEA program itself, giving few, unbiased outlets for complaints to get resolved.
“Because of the way VDOE and local education agencies put their hands on the scale and interfere with that process, then you can’t get the relief you seek,” the parents’ attorney William Merrill told the three-member panel.
Merrill said the parents spent a million dollars and many months getting access to records for the state’s IDEA system. They found, over the last 20 years, 60% of the hearing officers never ruled in favor of the parents. That rate is 80% for complaints in Northern Virginia.
And over that same two decades Virginia's hearing officers ruled in favor of parents in IDEA appeals at a rate of 1.8% while the national average is close to 30%.
But attorneys for Fairfax County Schools said one of the plaintiff parents failed to go through the process to properly appeal their student’s FAPE plan, and the other got a FAPE plan but it didn’t meet the parents’ expectations.
“These parents care about their kids, and they want the best and they seek out the best resources, but the law requires something they’re not really satisfied with,” Julia Judkins, attorney for the school system, argued.
In a statement sent after the hearing, attorney Merrill said they hoped the hearing would determine whether disabled students in Virginia must pursue their claims through a "corrupted due process system, even when that system cannot possibly grant the relief they seek.”
“The answer is clear under well-established law. They do not have to exhaust [the administrative process], because doing so would be futile,” the parents' attorney said.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, who's office defended the Department of Education at the hearing, did not offer additional comment.
Trevor Chaplick, one of the parents in the dispute, said he hoped their months-long investigation would help sway the court.
"There should be a meaningful way to directly confront this failure before a federal court rather than being forced to pursue claims through a corrupted system with a foregone conclusion,” Chaplick said.
The federal appeals panel did not signal when or how they intended to rule.
A similar effort by the same parents is currently pending at the Supreme Court of Virginia. In that case they’re asking the court to force Miyares to investigate the state’s IDEA system for bias.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
