The Second Circuit Concludes that the School District FAILED when it did not consider a 1:1 ABA Program for a Student
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued an important decision in favor of parents. In A.M. v. The NYC DOE, the parents of E.H., a 6 year old autistic student, provided the CSE with private evaluations and assessments all of which concluded that E.H. needed a 1:1 ABA-based program. The school district had no evaluations or assessments that contradicted the private evaluations. Nevertheless, the DOE recommended its “default” District 75 6:1:1 autism program.
When the reports and evaluative materials present at the IEP meeting yield a clear consensus, an IEP formulated for the child that fails to provide services consistent with that consensus is not ‘reasonably calculated to enable the child to receive educational benefits.
The Court concluded that school districts cannot simply place students into one of their available programs, restricting a student to those options if none of the available choices is appropriate for him/her.
This decision illustrates that it is more important than ever to have an updated, comprehensive private evaluation with clear and specific recommendations by an experienced clinician who is willing to advocate for your child’s needs at the IEP meeting, and at a hearing, if necessary.
Please contact us to discuss whether or not now is the time for your child to have an updated evaluation.
We have been working with Tracey since 2010, when she first represented us in our attempts to get appropriate school placing and home therapy for our severely autistic son. We had been suffering from increasingly inadequate support, and as his behaviour declined we had taken the daunting step of putting him in a costly private school as the only viable option. Tracey from the start was brilliant: she thought both in immediate and strategic terms of what we needed as a family then and what we would need in the future. And then went ahead in a calm, wholly committed and profoundly competent way to get it for us, year in, year out, without fail. Over the last six years she has closely monitored every stage of the development of our son’s needs and then gone about meeting them, straining to secure appropriate settlements and quickly and painlessly resolving hearings when they were not forthcoming. Her long experience and inside knowledge are impressive, and she consistently goes way beyond her professional obligations in caring for the families she represents; last year, for example, she drafted a letter in reply to our neighbors’ threats of legal action within 24 hours. Tracey’s mastery of special education law in New York may be unparalleled, and she sees her clients not just as individual students, parents, or indeed clients, but as families. There are some people whose jobs are, more than jobs, genuine vocations, and to our great good luck Tracey is one of them. That our family has managed to stay together through these years it is in large part due to her.
Tracey has the legal skills and knowledge to prevail against the better-funded school district in-house lawyers and hired-guns