The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights (OCR) for Denver decided a case, Granite School District , 45 IDELR 65 (2004) which ruled that where the school failed to provide paper, pencils and books while the child was in his jail cell was not a violation of law. The reasoning of this decision was noteworthy even for students who are not in jail.
OCR found that the "IEP does not require the District to provide the items [pencils, paper and books] specified by the complainant [parents] above." Accordingly, the IEP was properly implemented and found no violation. The investigator also grounded his ruling on the fact that the parents agreed to the IEP which did not specify books, paper and pencils.
The construction of this IEP is remarkable. Under the analysis of Granite School District even the most basic items like pencils, paper and books must be set out in the IEP or else the student does not receive it. The literalness of this decision is not unique to special education students in jail. I have seen too many decisions decided against parents based upon cramped readings of the terms of the IEP. This decision takes such decision-making to absurd conclusions.
The other subtext of this ruling is that the parents sat and agreed to the IEP, so they can not be heard to complain. The logic breaks down as no reasonable parent of a child with special needs in school or jail would anticipate that basic items like books, pencils and paper needed to be explicitly written down. Nevertheless, the argument that parents' failure to complain at or shortly after the IEP, precludes later arguments is an increasingly common position that schools use to defend due process cases.
Based upon Granite School District parents need to consider taking the following actions:
- Use very specific input statements that set out all requests and objections at the IEP or following; albeit, no input statement would ever be specific enough to provide for books, pencils and paper.
- The more the relationship with the school is strained, the more specific the IEP needs to be, or put another way if it is not written you do not get it. Granite School District is the perfect retort to the school claiming "don't be ridiculous we will do that, but we don't need to write it down."
- Granite School District is an absurd case, but it does serve as a lesson of how literal and cramped an adjudicator can construe an IEP.
- When sufficiently motivated (hostile) a school district will fight parents over even the most mundane items.
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