Due Process Expectations

Hello everyone. I had posted in October, and again in January and February about my personal experiences with due process. I was shocked by what I didn’t know about it before I had experienced it, and thought you might be interested in hearing one first hand account.

Anyway - here’s our saga:
We had initiated due process after being denied independant evaluations at district expense. We were looking for appropriate placement for our gifted/LD/bipolar son. The district took the stance that they didn’t need to address our son’s bipolar because he had never had a behavioral problem at school - his behavioral issues are only at home; and they claimed it doesn’t effect his education because he earns A’s an B’s. At the first due process meeting in January the district offered some of the IEEs, and we scheduled many more hearing dates in March. During this “wait time” I asked our lawyer to push the district into getting the IEE’s scheduled. She did, and they did. They agreed to and set-up a reading eval, a psychiatric eval, and a sensory integration/OT eval. The March dates were “suspended” pending the receipt of the eval reports. One week after the psychiatric eval was administered our son was hospitalized for his bipolar. He was dischaged from inpatient hospitalization after 1 week, and participated in a partial hospitalization program for 2 weeks. (This is a day hospital program where the child comes home every afternoon. It takes the place of school, and consists of therapy and academics) When he was discharged from the partial program the district offered us homebound instruction. In PA this translates to 1 hour per subject per week - or 5 hours of 1 on 1 tutoring at our home each week. We accepted this as an interum placement. We met with the school district 3 days afer his discharge to discuss long term placement. The district looked over the eval reports from the independant psych eval, and the evals fom the hospital, and immediately offered us private placement of OUR choice, until he meets the graduation requirements of the school he’s attending, with a promise that THEY will not seek a change of placement. We can seek a change of placement if our son’s needs change during this time (which should be 5 or 6 years, as he’s in 7th grade now). The offer is contingent on us dropping the due process suit, agreeing not to persue any claims of the district’s failure to provide FAPE, and agreeing not to seek reimbursement for any of our lawyer’s fees. We accepted!!!!

Our lawyers fees should end up in the $7,000 - $8,000 range. The two schools we chose run $25,000 - $30,000 per year THIS year, and generally go up 10% each year. It was a VERY stressful year for everyone in our family (our other 2 children are showing signs of emotional stress - the hospitalization of their brother was very difficult for them) and it will take us a little while to heal. Hopefully, with appropriate placement, our son will maintain his stability and our family won’t have to experience this degree of stress again.

Our lawyers told us this was one of the biggest settlements they’ve seen in this area. They told us we raised the bar - set new precedent - in this region. We hope we’ve raised local districts’ awareness regarding the impact of neuropsychiatric illness on all aspects of a child’s life (and their family’s too)

Our gifted/LD/bipolar son remains on homebound for now. He is doing well, and we hope to begin a modified school day in the very near future, where he will attend his afternoon classes only and continue to recieve homebound instruction for his morning classes.

I hope this gives anyone considering due process an idea of how much time, money and stress is involved. If we hadn’t settled, the total costs could have been in the $20,000 range, and it could have dragged on for several more months. After all of that, a hearing officer would have decided what our awards would’ve been, if anything.

Signing off - CBS