Every "Case Closed" installment details a State Review Office decision — the level above an impartial hearing — where a parent or district can appeal if they think the first ruling with an Impartial Hearing Officer (IHO) got it wrong.
Then we ask a special ed lawyer to offer insights. This installment features Mark Gutman, co-founder of Gutman Vasiliou, LLP.
“SRO decisions are often cited in impartial hearings,” said Mark, “and parents and advocates could use SRO decisions to help them argue their case, while IHO decisions usually don't have any weight at all.”
Great insight already! Thanks Mark.
Here’s what happened in case 24-006:
A mom won her fight to get the DOE to pay for her daughter's private school — then had that award reduced by $20,000 because of a paperwork snafu. It took an appeal to get her the full $60,000 back. Here’s what happened:
A mom didn't like her daughter's special ed plan.
She thought the school district's program wouldn't work for her daughter. So she sent the district a letter saying so, and enrolled her daughter in a private school instead. Then she asked the district to pay for it.
The district said no. So she went to a hearing.
The hearing officer (IHO) agreed the district's plan was bad. The district never showed up with a witness to explain why their program would actually work for this child. That's the district's job — and they didn't do it. Sound familiar?
An IHO cut her award by two-thirds — the state restored all of it.
She won. But the IHO reduced her reimbursement, for two reasons.
First: the IHO ruled that the mom waited too long to tell the district she was rejecting their plan.
Second: she signed a firm contract with the private school — no way out if the district changed its mind. The hearing officer took that as proof she never really planned to work with the DOE..
She appealed to the State Review Officer — and won back the difference.
The SRO ruled that one of the IHO's two reasons, the lag in informing the DOE she was rejecting their placement, wasn't actually a problem. Why? The IHO had looked at the wrong ten-day notice letter. There was an earlier letter — sent a day before she even signed the contract with the private school — that the IHO dismissed because it named the wrong school by mistake. Once the SRO reviewed the case and looked at that earlier letter, the timing checked out fine. She'd given notice on time after all.
And the "no way out" contract with the private school wasn't proof of anything either.
The SRO ruled that signing a firm contract with a private school doesn't mean a parent is uncooperative with the DOE. To prove that, the district would've had to show she actually blocked them somehow — skipped meetings, wouldn't share information, that kind of thing. They never showed that.
So the SRO reversed the IHO. She got her full $60,000.
THE TAKEAWAY, from special education attorney Mark Gutman:
A hearing officer can get the facts wrong. “That's what happened here — the timing of the mom’s letter wasn't actually late, it just looked that way because of a mixed-up letter. Appeals exist for exactly this reason.”
A small mistake in your Ten Day Notice letter isn't automatically fatal. “She named the wrong school and it still counted, once she appealed. The legal question is whether the District was put on notice of the disagreement (that the parent was rejecting the district's plan), not about whether the parent had named the correct private school.”
A firm, no-exit-clause contract doesn't mean you weren't cooperating. “However, it didn't look good to this IHO that the parent made a decision she could not turn back regardless of what the CSE did. In this case, it didn't matter because the CSE still did not recommend an appropriate placement, but if they did, the parent would have been in trouble here.”
Said Mark: “You don't have to pretend you're willing to accept a district placement you already know won't work — you just have to cooperate and give the district a real shot at doing its job. If they still can't come through, that's on them.”
Mark’s advice: “Ask the private school to build an exit clause into your contract anyway, letting you walk away if the district comes through with something appropriate before the year starts. It wouldn't have changed this case's outcome, but it's cheap insurance against the argument ever coming up in yours.”
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