Student Who Uses a Letterboard Wins Rare Due Process Case Against Fairfax County Public Schools (VA), Part 2: A Professional Association Does Not Amend an IEP
FCPS could question S2C, seek safeguards, observe the student, and propose changes. It couldn’t leave agreed communication access unimplemented because of ASHA’s letterboard stance.
May 23, 2026, Virginia special education Hearing Officer Polly Chong issued a decision in VDOE Case No. 26-016 finding that Fairfax County Public Schools denied a student a free appropriate public education (FAPE), under IDEA.
The student and parents prevailed.
The first article in this series focused on the bigger picture. This article drills into one of the decision’s most important legal points: a professional organization’s general position doesn’t amend an individual student’s IEP.
In this case, the organization is American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). The issue is ASHA’s position on Spelling to Communicate (S2C) and related methods.
FCPS argued “that the methodology was unconventional, rare, and never been used.” Aside from this being inaccurate, FCPS’s concerns were irrelevant. IEP team members proposed the method within the IEP and the parent consented. FCPS staff members who comprised the student’s IEP team after he transitioned to high school had the right to raise concerns, but they didn’t have the right to delay or refuse to implement the IEP created by their colleagues at a different school.
This Was an IEP Implementation Case
The student’s June 2023 IEP stated that, due to the student’s unique disability-related needs, his “primary preferred communication method” required a letterboard to spell his communication, and that his fluency required support from a trusted and familiar person trained in that communication method. Both FCPS and the parents agreed that the June 2023 IEP was the student’s stay-put IEP.
That language controlled the case.
FCPS had an IEP and the IEP included communication access. If FCPS believed the IEP needed to be changed, IDEA provided a process. Changes could be made by the IEP team or through an agreed written amendment. If FCPS proposed or refused to change the student’s identification, evaluation, placement, or provision of FAPE, it had to provide prior written notice. Simply not implementing the IEP wasn’t an option.
The Letterboard Language Didn’t Come From Nowhere
One of the key facts in the decision is that the letterboard was not some unknown method that suddenly appeared at the high school’s door.
FCPS records from 2021 and 2022 already referenced the student spelling, typing, using a letterboard, and spelling functional needs such as “allergies,” “headache,” “break,” and “lights off.” The hearing officer found that, although the acronym S2C may not have appeared in those earlier records, the absence of the acronym didn’t mean FCPS lacked knowledge of the student’s letterboard communication.
The decision also supports that the June 2023 IEP language was not simply a parent demand imposed on educators. The mother testified that the middle school team was supportive and collaborative, that the team discussed how to set the student up for success in high school, and that the letterboard language was an IEP team decision, not simply a parent request.
This wasn’t a case of parents versus educators. FCPS educators helped place the communication access language in the IEP. Then, when the student transitioned to high school, different FCPS leadership and specialists questioned, doubted, and delayed implementation of the support already written into the IEP.
When High School and Central Office Staff Disagreed, the IEP Still Controlled
Dawn Schaefer, director of FCPS’s Office of Special Education Procedural Support, testified that FCPS wanted to understand how the communication method would look in the classroom. She wanted to observe prompting, positioning, and how much of the communication was coming from the partner as compared to the student. She also acknowledged that FCPS was required to implement the June 2023 IEP as written and that the smooth transition to the high school didn’t happen.
The high school speech-language pathologist (SPL) who worked with the student testified that she believed the student’s AAC device remained important because it didn’t require a communication partner, and she raised concerns about S2C, including independent authorship and emergency communication. All of these are legitimate topics for an IEP team to discuss.
However . . .
Her disagreement didn’t void the IEP. If FCPS believed the IEP was inappropriate, unsafe, unclear, or inconsistent with professional practice, it had options. It could observe the student, collect data, propose evaluations, convene the IEP team, and make a different proposal.
FCPS did not have the right to treat the IEP as optional.
The SLP Chose Not to Observe
The most revealing part of the SLP’s testimony was not that she disagreed with S2C. It was that she maintained her position without observing the student using the communication support at issue.
The following are two exchanges between the hearing officer and speech-language pathologist.
Hearing officer: Why haven’t you observed him with his CRP?
Speech-language pathologist: Because it is not that independent work.
Hearing officer: So is it that you don’t want to observe it, or you came to the conclusion that it’s not his independent work?
Speech-language pathologist: I don’t believe it’s his work.
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.
It’s one thing to have professional concerns. It’s entirely something else to refuse to observe the student working with his CRP and insist the student’s CRP-supported work isn’t his own.
The hearing officer gave the SLP’s opinion about the student’s use of the letterboard limited weight because she didn’t observed him with his CRPs and because she appeared rigid in her view.
Had she observed him, the SLP would have seen what you can view in the video below of the student spelling with Kelly Berg, of Growing Kids Therapy Center. The video has been sped up because spelling this way is time-consuming. While this isn’t a video of the student’s testimony, it provides an example of what those attending the hearing witnessed. The board stays in the same position. There is no prompting the student to choose a specific letter.
ASHA’s Position Didn’t Rewrite the IEP
FCPS’s SLP testified that she is a member of ASHA and that ASHA takes the position that S2C is not evidence-based and should not be used. ASHA’s public materials state that ASHA doesn’t recommend Rapid Prompting Method, also known as Spelling to Communicate (S2C), due to concerns about scientific validity, prompt dependency, and authorship. On its site, ASHA claims:
