In a Major Special Education Win, Court Says Virginia District Misread a Decision, Mishandled the Case, and Owes Tuition
Ruling confirms due process hearing officers can order private placement—and districts can be held accountable when they ignore accommodations or misinterpret IDEA.
Today’s decision in PWCSB v. Lassiter is a major win for parents and students. It reaffirms that due process hearing officers can order private school placement and is an extraordinary example of a federal judge calling out a school division on misinterpreting a decision, mishandling its own appeal, and abandoning the arguments it claimed to be litigating. The Court’s decision upheld the due process hearing officer’s previous ruling in favor of the parents and criticized Prince William County School Board (PWCSB) for filing an “untethered” motion and misreading the very due process hearing order it appealed.
Buried Lede
This is one of those cases that contains so many heavyweight issues that choosing where to begin feels like its own injustice. Anything left out of the headline feels like burying the lede, so thank you for sticking with me.
Background
The student in this case has multiple disabilities, including ADD, anxiety, a venous malformation requiring surgeries and causing chronic pain, amblyopia, myopia, and working auditory-memory deficits. Her parents sought support under a Section 504 Plan and then an IEP. After a long struggle with Prince William County Public Schools (PWCPS), the parents placed their daughter in a private college prep school and then filed a due process complaint against the district.
February 29, 2024, the due process hearing officer issued a decision, finding a private college preparatory school to be the appropriate placement for the student, and ordering the district to pay for the student’s tuition.
Decisions favoring parents are outside the norm in Virginia, so unprecedented was the word du jour. According to the non-profit Hear Our Voices, hearing officers in Virginia ruled in favor of parents less than 2% of the time during a 20-year period, and approximately 1% of the time in Northern Virginia—and 26 of the 40 hearing officers appointed during the same 20 years had “never ruled, not once, in favor of a disabled or special needs child in a due process case brought under the IDEA.”
PWCSB appealed the decision—and failed to prevail.