Office for Civil Rights Requires Flagler County Public Schools (FL) to Address Retaliation Against Teacher Who Raised IEP Concerns
OCR finds the district wrongfully retaliated against a teacher after she emailed concerns that multiple students’ IEP support minutes were not being met.
April 17, 2026, U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a letter to Flagler County Public Schools (FCPS) in Florida, after investigating a complaint alleging the district retaliated against a teacher who raised concerns about newly adopted special education practices and documentation showing students’ IEPs were not being followed.
OCR investigated one allegation:
“[T]he District retaliated against [redacted content] (the Complainant) when it fired her on [redacted content] from [redacted content] (School) after she sent the District an email on [redacted content] that included her concerns with the newly adopted practices for special education students and documentation that showed students’ IEPs not being followed.”
OCR found sufficient evidence to support the retaliation allegation.
April 15, 2026, FCPS entered into a resolution agreement with OCR.
What Happened
The complainant was a teacher with 33 years of experience, a master’s degree, and math certification (grade range for the certification was redacted). She had previously worked at the school, and the principal described her in an employment reference as having a positive attitude, great rapport with students and families, and being a strong teacher the principal would hire again.
The teacher later returned when a math teacher position opened up at the school:
“According to District Employment policies because she was starting over at the School the Complainant was a probationary employee for the first year.”
During the 2023–2024 school year, the school adopted a new practice for IEP meetings. Each grade level had a designated day of the week for IEP meetings. Seventh-grade IEP meetings were held on Wednesdays.
According to OCR’s letter:
“The Assistant Principal (AP) stated that under this practice, support facilitators who are staff that provide support to their Exceptional Student Education in reading and math blocks, were meant to schedule their IEP meetings for those days based on the grade level of the student who needed a meeting. If they had a meeting on that day, support facilitators would not be in their scheduled 90-minute general education classroom to provide support to students. However, if they did not have a meeting, they were meant to attend their scheduled class to provide support to ESE students. If a support facilitator were to miss a class due to an IEP meeting, they were supposed to make up those support minutes by being available to the ESE students for extra support during the 50-minute Eagle Advisory classes, which was a homeroom class each student had every day. If the support facilitator was not in a scheduled class on a given day, they were meant to work together with the general education teacher to make sure the ESE students were receiving their accommodations.”
This raises the following question:
How exactly are 90 minutes of missed in-class support made up during a 50-minute advisory period?
