Due Process Hearing Against Fairfax County School Board: Day Six
The final day of the hearing and the exchanges that stole the show.
This due process hearing took place March 23–27 and April 24, 2026, and was open to the public. Attorneys Grace E. Kim and James Atkinson (Law Office of Grace E. Kim) represented the student’s family, while John Cafferky and Todd Davis (Blankingship & Keith) appeared for Fairfax County School Board. (Additional Reading: Day One, Day Four, and Day Five)
The most consequential exchange on day six didn’t come from a lawyer. It came from the hearing officer. In a moment that felt more like a parent’s challenge than a typical question from a hearing officer, she turned to the school’s speech‑language pathologist (SLP) and asked two simple things: “Why haven’t you observed him with his CRP (communication regulation partner)?” and “What harm would it have done to observe?” The SLP acknowledged she had not watched him and conceded that observing wouldn’t have done any harm. She simply didn’t believe in the letterboard method. That exchange set the tone for the rest of the day’s testimony, which ranged from speech therapy and occupational therapy to the nuts and bolts of the IEP process.
Another noteworthy exchange occurred later in the day, when attorney Grace Kim confronted the district’s procedural support liaison (PSL) with a startling fact: the district’s own data put the student at a pre‑kindergarten math level last school year, yet this year he is enrolled in general education geometry. Despite this breathtaking leap, the PSL refused to say the earlier IEP—based on that lower data—was inappropriate. Her unwillingness to acknowledge such a clear mismatch between the student’s demonstrated ability and his goals proved just as consequential as the hearing officer’s questions to the SLP.
The SLP’s Testimony and the Hearing Officer’s Questions
The SLP began by describing her history with the student. She initially provided four hours of speech‑language services each month—two hours of push‑in and two hours of pull‑out support—but by the 2025 IEP meeting the team had cut those services to two hours. She said this reduction was justified because her focus had shifted to “independent communication,” working with the student to use a speech‑generating device to offer identifying information and ask for help. Later, she testified that the parents had consented to a reduction in both goals and service hours and reiterated that two hours were sufficient.
Much of the morning focused on her professional skepticism toward spelling‑to‑communicate. Citing guidance from the American Speech‑Language‑Hearing Association (ASHA), she maintained that spelling‑to‑communicate is not an evidence‑based practice and does not guarantee authorship. Although two teachers, the school’s special‑education department head, and the student’s CRP all said they had no doubt his answers were his own, she said she did not believe it. In her view, any work produced with a CRP was kin to turning in someone else’s homework. Yet, under cross‑examination she conceded she had never observed the student using his CRP and acknowledged that none of his teachers had expressed concerns about the authenticity of his work.
At the end of her questioning, the hearing officer probed this further:
Hearing officer: What harm would it have done for you to observe him?
Speech‑language pathologist: It probably wouldn’t have done anything. I just didn’t. I don’t believe in it, and I didn’t.
This exchange captured the heart of the dispute. The hearing officer gave the SLP an opportunity to explain why she hadn’t watched the student spell, and the SLP admitted there was no downside—she simply didn’t believe in it. In other words, she dismissed what other staff and family members had experienced and refused to gather firsthand evidence because her mind was already made up.
That is particularly striking given Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) prohibits predetermination and given she continued to insist the student’s CRP‑assisted work wasn’t really his. By declining to observe the student and still claiming it wasn’t his work, the SLP revealed a closed‑minded approach that prioritized professional doctrine over individualized evidence.
Earlier in her testimony, a similar exchange made the same point even more bluntly: