Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); A “free appropriate public education” (FAPE); Failure to identify & evaluate a student for special education services; The “child-find mandate”; 34 CFR § 300.111; Wilson County Schools (WCS); Administrative law judge (ALJ); Individualized education program (IEP)

The court affirmed the district court’s ruling that defendant-school district (WCS) did not deny plaintiff-student (Ja. B.) a FAPE by failing to identify and evaluate him for special education services. Plaintiffs-parents filed an administrative due process complaint alleging that WCS failed to provide Ja. B. with a FAPE “by failing to identify and evaluate him for special education services and failing to design and implement IEPs for the 2017 through 2019 school years.” WCS then evaluated him and concluded he “was eligible for special education and related services.” The ALJ determined that WCS did not deny Ja. B a FAPE. Plaintiffs then sued WCS under the IDEA. The district court affirmed the ALJ’s order. Ja. B. previously attended school in Illinois, where he did not have a safety plan, IEP, or section 504 plan, and met behavioral and academic expectations. When the family moved to Tennessee, he began acting out in class, refusing to do his homework, and being disrespectful to school personnel. After his behaviors escalated, he was hospitalized. His discharge papers listed various diagnoses. He was later charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest for an incident at school, but the charges were dropped. He was suspended. His parents withdrew him from the school and placed him in a private school. The court explained that to find a violation of the child-find mandate, “‘the claimant must show that school officials overlooked clear signs of disability and were negligent in failing to order testing, or that there was no rational justification for not deciding to evaluate.’” The court concluded WCS took “some action to support Ja. B” and after he was discharged from the hospital, “began the section 504 process.” Also, several teachers testified that his “behaviors in fall 2017, while enough to warrant disciplinary referrals, were not yet to the point of requiring a special education referral.” The court noted that it has in the past “acknowledged that a school did not violate its child-find responsibilities by first attempting other interventions for a student instead of immediately referring for an evaluation.” It further noted that he only attended the school for a few months and in “cases that have found child-find violations, the observed behaviors that indicated a possible disability occurred over a longer time-frame—usually multiple years.”