The following article first appeared as a quarterly commentary in Massachusetts Special Education Reporter (MSER), a publication focusing on the decisions of the Massachusetts Bureau of Special Education Appeals.

Commentary on Massachusetts Special Education Decisions: 4th Quarter, 2006, by Lawrence Kotin

This quarterly Commentary reviews 15 decisions by the Bureau of Special Education Appeals. As usual, these decisions span a wide range of issues. Five offer insight into the application of the FAPE standard and are addressed in considerable detail. The remaining 10 are summarized more briefly. One addresses the issue of school-district responsibility for a placement in a residential school where the parents are divorced and live in different districts. Two others address the issue of the "stay put" placement pending the resolution of the disputes. Two more involve disputes over the choice of service providers. Another involves a dispute about when during the day services would be provided. Another addresses the issue of the appropriateness of the appointment of a surrogate parent where the location of the parents is known. Another involves a school district's unilateral effort to replace an accepted IEP with its own IEP without reconvening the TEAM. Another is a case in which the parents initiated a hearing but then failed to participate in the process. The final case involves parents who refused to consent to a three-year re-evaluation because they felt their child no longer required special education; in this case, the district initiated the hearing to clarify its responsibility, since termination of a student's eligibility for special education normally requires a prior re-evaluation.

Case studies in the application of the FAPE standard

In Southwick-Tolland Regional School District, BSEA #06-6583, 12 MSER 279 (2006), the dispute was about whether the student could receive FAPE in the program proposed by the district (a program primarily in the mainstream with the support of an aide or teacher) or whether she required a substantially separate program at a private day school (the White Oak School). The student in this case was a 13-year-old girl in the eighth grade with a language-based learning disability and attention deficits. She had been adopted at age eight from DSS and began attending the district in a repeat of third grade. Cognitive testing placed her in the average range, but with a 21-point difference between her perceptual learning scores (her relative strength) and her verbal learning scores (her relative weakness). She had no other issues and, in fact, was an enthusiastic learner, well-liked by her peers and teachers.

The district provided a combination pullout/mainstream support program for her seventh-grade year and a similar program for eighth grade (but with less pullout and more mainstream support). The district argued that the student had made effective progress in seventh grade and would continue to do so in a comparable program for eighth grade. The parent's position was that the student had failed to make effective progress in those areas that were most problematic (e.g., reading) and that she required a placement in a substantially separate private day school (i.e., the White Oak School) in order to make such progress. The parent made a unilateral placement at the White Oak School for eighth grade and was seeking retroactive and prospective relief.

The Hearing Officer began his analysis by defining the legal standard for FAPE and assigning the burden of proof to the parent. He then commented "on the credibility of the principal witnesses…as well as the written evaluation reports" and how he intended to weigh the evidence. The factors that enhanced the credibility of a witness were the quality of the testimony (i.e., whether the testimony was "candid, articulate, thoughtful and insightful"); whether the witness had experience working on behalf of both parents and school districts; the extent of the witness's formal education, training, and knowledge in the area of the student's disabilities; experience in addressing how such disabilities could be remediated; and how well the witness knew the student, including the number of evaluations and classroom observations of the student the witness had completed over time and particularly recently. In considering all of these factors, it was clear that greater strengths in one area could offset lesser strengths in others, so long as the testimony was of high quality.

Applying those factors to the matter in dispute, the Hearing Officer gave considerable weight to the testimony and reports of the speech-language pathologist and the psychologist retained by the parents. Conversely, he gave little weight to the testimony of most of the district's witnesses because of either their limited expertise or their vague and less than candid testimony. The Hearing Officer then concluded that while the student had made progress in certain areas, those areas were of secondary importance to her main areas of need, where she made little or no progress. Furthermore, he stressed the critical finding that she had considerable potential for much greater progress in her main areas of need. He then adopted the recommendations of the two parents' experts and found that the educational model recommended by them had not been offered by the district nor was it available within the district. As to whether the district could create such a program, he concluded that "it would be practically impossible for the School District to create this educational model in a relatively short timeframe."

Noting that the parent had refused consent for a reading evaluation prior to her unilateral placement of her daughter, the Hearing Officer was required to decide, within his discretion, whether the parent's reimbursement for her unilateral placement should be reduced or denied. In making an "equitable finding" on this issue, the Hearing Officer decided that reimbursement should not be reduced or denied because there had already been a sufficient amount of reading testing conducted, and the district did not pursue its request to evaluate in a manner that communicated that such evaluation was critical to its understanding of the student. The Hearing Officer then ordered the placement requested by the parent.

This was a very carefully reasoned decision following a thorough presentation of the evidence. Of particular importance to the outcome was the Hearing Officer's articulation of the FAPE standard as requiring strict attention to the student's unique profile, including the student's potential for achievement in the areas of greatest need. Also of key importance was the Hearing Officer's assessment of the weight to be given to the testimony of the various witnesses and the documentary evidence. By making his thought process explicit, the Hearing Officer provided significant guidance to future litigants regarding the nature of the proof required for a party to prevail at a BSEA hearing.

In Groton-Dunstable Regional School District, BSEA 06-0890, 12 MSER 350 (2006)[1], the same Hearing Officer offered further guidance on the nature of the proof required to prevail at a BSEA hearing. The student in this case was an eight-year-old girl in the third grade whose parents unilaterally placed her at the Carroll School for second grade. As in Southwick, supra, the district had been offering pullout and inclusion services until the parents made their unilateral placement. This case, however, involved a claim for both retroactive reimbursement and for prospective placement.

As a preliminary matter, the Hearing Officer was presented with a motion to dismiss filed by the district. The motion was based on the fact that the parents had originally accepted the district's proposed IEP for second grade. Over the summer, however, after the student's completion of her first-grade year in the district's program, the parents revoked their acceptance of the IEP, notifying the district of their intention to place their daughter at the Carroll School for second grade and to seek reimbursement for such placement. The district argued in its motion that the parents were precluded from seeking reimbursement for second and third grade because they had accepted the IEP for second grade. In his Ruling, the Hearing Officer cited the regulation entitling parents who had accepted an IEP to revoke their acceptance at any time (603 CMR 28.07(1)(a)(2), 35 CFR 300.9). He also found that the parents had complied with the notice requirements applicable to unilateral placements by parents (20 USC 1412 (a)(10)(C)(iii) (I)(aa)). After oral argument, the Hearing Officer denied the district's motion.

The Hearing Officer began his analysis of the merits of the case by focusing first on the issue of prospective relief. As in Southwick, supra, the parents in this case were successful in proving that their child's language-based learning disabilities prevented her from making effective progress in the inclusion/pullout model offered by the district. As a result, the Hearing Officer ordered the district to write an IEP for the Carroll School program, which the student was attending.

In his analysis of the evidence presented at the four-day hearing, the Hearing Officer used an approach similar to that in Southwick by emphasizing, at the outset, the student's "unique educational needs" and making explicit how he intended to weigh the testimony of the various witnesses. He found the student in this case to have significant untapped potential reflected, for example, in her strengths in nonverbal reasoning and listening comprehension. He also found her to have "a complex and pervasive language-based learning disability that affects both her understanding (receptive language) and her oral and written production (expressive language)." In addition, he found her to have dyslexia and executive-functioning difficulties "in the form of severe memory deficits and attention limitations." In summarizing these learning issues, he found her to have "weaknesses in every part of language…."

In assessing the weight he would give to the testimony of the witnesses, the Hearing Officer focused first on the seven witnesses who provided services to or evaluated the student during the most recent 24 months. Using the same criteria outlined in Southwick, he gave the most weight to the testimony of the learning specialist and speech/language pathologist retained by the parents. These witnesses had both observed the student at Carroll, and the learning specialist had also observed the district's proposed third-grade placement. It is notable that the learning specialist completed her observation and evaluation of the student after the beginning of the student's third-grade year; but the quality of her testimony and her experience in diagnosing complex needs and prescribing classroom services outweighed any disadvantage that might have accrued from her late entry into the case.

In giving great weight to the testimony of these two witnesses, finding the other witnesses to be a distant second because of narrower expertise or limited experience in prescribing educational services, the Hearing Officer concluded that it would have been impossible for the student to make effective progress in a pullout/inclusion program and that she required a program like that offered by the Carroll School. He ordered the district to write an IEP with a placement at Carroll, but he ordered reimbursement only for the period commencing about a month before the hearing, when the district should have but did not convene the TEAM to consider the evaluation report of the parents' learning specialist.

The principle of holding the district responsible for "what was known or should have been known at the time [each] IEP was drafted" guided the Hearing Officer's consideration of the parents' claims in this case. Although other independent evaluations had concluded that the student needed a separate, language-based classroom in order to make effective progress, the Hearing Officer found that all of the district's IEPs were appropriate at the time they were written (end of first grade, beginning of second grade, and spring of second grade), based on what the district knew or should have known at those times. However, when the district received the evaluation report of the parents' learning specialist at the beginning of third grade (approximately five weeks before the first day of the hearing), the district should have convened the TEAM and concluded that the evidence was then compelling that the student required a substantially separate, language-based program across all areas of the curriculum, comparable to that offered by the Carroll School. Consequently, the Hearing Officer ordered the district to write an IEP specifying placement at the Carroll School from the date the TEAM should have reconvened, and he ordered reimbursement for the short time period that had passed since the district had received the evaluation report.

In summary, the Hearing Officer awarded the parents what was of greatest importance to them: current and prospective placement at the Carroll School. At the same time, he credited the district and its teachers for their past decisions when, arguably, the nature and severity of the student's needs might have been less evident. Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with the outcome, the Hearing Officer' s reasoning was precise and explicit, so that both parties knew that the evidence they presented was reviewed with great care and given due consideration.

In dramatic contrast to the presentation of the parents' cases in Southwick and Groton-Dunstable, supra, was the parents' presentation in Springfield Public Schools, BSEA #06-1175, 12 MSER 299 (2006). As in the other two cases involving a student with a language-based learning disability , this case involved the issue of whether the district's pullout/inclusion program was appropriate or whether the student required a placement at a private day school (the White Oak School). The student in this case was an 11-year-old fifth-grade student with a full scale IQ of 125 (V-126, P-119 on the WISC-III) who had been diagnosed with a "mild dyslexia/mild language-based learning disability related to phonological processing impairment." She was also diagnosed with "a speech-language impairment which resulted in a reduced ability to process and express oral and written information."

Focusing primarily on the results of standardized testing, the Hearing Officer found that the student had made effective progress under the IEP which preceded the IEP at issue. Since the IEP at issue was an extension of the previous one, except with additional services, the Hearing Officer concluded that the student would have made effective progress under the proposed IEP and did not require an out-of-district placement. Furthermore, the parents failed to provide any expert opinion recommending an outside placement.

To say the least, this case is puzzling. Some aspects of the procedural history mentioned briefly in the decision included a year 's delay between the request for the hearing and the actual hearing, and parents' motions, which were denied, for stay-put at the White Oak School and for a default judgment. I hesitate to make any judgments about the case except to say that it appears to be one that was not appropriate for the hearing process. Given the statement of the student's mother to her attorney one month before seeing the proposed district program (why this attorney-client communication made it into the record is unknown), that "I want Ann to go to White Oak for a proper education," it is possible that the parents were focusing on the gap between their daughter's intelligence, on the one hand, and her average scores on achievement tests and her struggles in school, on the other. Unfortunately, as the cases supra illustrate, it takes a great deal more than that which was apparently presented in this case—persuasive evidence of the severity of the student's needs and the lack of the student's progress—for a Hearing Officer to have a basis for finding a district's proposed program to be inappropriate.

Middleborough Public Schools, BSEA #06-4208, 12 MSER 310 (2006), involved a 16-year-old ninth-grade student who was diagnosed at an early age with "microcephaly of undefined etiology and associated behavioral problems, language related difficulties, minimally depressed motor skills, and delayed fine motor skills." She was on IEPs from when she entered the district in second grade and during all of those years received "services and multiple accommodations to address her severely compromised auditory and language processing skills, and below average comprehension, memory, receptive-expressive language skills, and pragmatic skills." According to the evidence, she "acquired skills at a slow but steady rate and made good progress toward her annual goals."

She received an independent evaluation during the summer before entering ninth grade, following a recommendation by the district that she attend a regional vocational technical school for ninth grade. The evaluator found that her achievement levels clustered at a third- to fourth-grade level, with math at a mid-second-grade level. The evaluator also found that she was more successful in a structured setting and that she had reached a point where the divergence in academic functioning between her and her peers would increase significantly. This was complicated by the fact that she was very socially engaged with some strong friendships, but felt the need to hide her difficulties from her peers, causing significant social distress.

The evaluator concluded that she should not attend the regional vocational high school because it was not sufficiently structured and academically oriented but, instead, should be placed in a self-contained classroom within the regular high school, with an emphasis on more-intensive academic remediation but with a functional component to enable her to carry out everyday tasks in the community. The parents notified the district of their decision to keep their daughter at the high school, and a TEAM meeting was convened at the end of August. A partial inclusion program was proposed and implemented. The decision was silent on whether the recommendation of the independent evaluator for a self-contained classroom was communicated to the district at that time.

From the time of the independent evaluation, the case became complicated by a series of unanticipated and tangential events. For example, the parents and student (who had been adopted at an early age) apparently were at war with one another over the student's choice of a boyfriend and of friends in the high school. This dispute led to the student's decompensation when she entered the high school and eventually resulted in a hospitalization in the fall resulting from a suicidal comment in the student's journal. A TEAM meeting was reconvened in December. The independent evaluator attended and verbally presented her findings and recommendations. An IEP was developed that removed the student from inclusion classes but did not provide her with the self-contained program envisioned by the independent evaluator. Also, the student felt uncomfortable in either the special-education environment, where she felt stigmatized and out of touch with her mainstream friends, or the inclusion environment, where she felt inferior and defective.

The parents rejected the proposed IEP because it was only a partial program (apparently intended as an "interim program") that failed to offer the substantially separate classroom proposed by the independent evaluator, and because the student refused to attend it. The parents then placed their daughter unilaterally at the Riverview School and requested funding from the district. Shortly thereafter, the district requested that a personality assessment be conducted by a clinical psychologist. Apparently, the parties agreed to have this assessment done by a mutually agreed-upon psychologist even though the student's psychological issues seemed to be of secondary concern compared to her poor academic functioning, neurological and social issues. This psychologist concluded that the student's placement at the Riverview School was probably ill-advised because of the student's adoption issues and some resistance to the placement by the student, and recommended instead individual and family therapy. The student's therapist (or at least the therapist's notes) confirmed that the transition to the Riverview School had been difficult. At the end of the school year, however, the independent evaluator, who had endorsed the Riverview placement earlier, observed the program at Riverview and concluded that it was appropriate and that it met her recommendations in all respects.

This case presented a complex factual situation with intervening family issues and issues of adolescence superimposed on the already complex neurological, medical, academic, and social-emotional profile of the student involved. To further complicate things, the report of the parents' independent evaluator with its detailed findings was not presented to the district until after the student had been placed at the Riverview School, though the evaluator presented her findings and recommendations verbally at the December TEAM meeting preceding the February placement. Also, the mutually agreed-to "personality assessment" introduced a tangent to the central issue of placement, which greatly weakened the parents' position.

In general, the district skillfully capitalized upon the disarray in the family to persuade the Hearing Officer that the "family issues" were the central problem and that the district had acted appropriately at each point, despite being unable or unwilling to provide the kind of program recommended by the independent evaluator. Also, the Hearing Officer appeared to give little or no weight to the findings and recommendations of the independent evaluator, despite the fact that they were consistent throughout the turbulent history of the case and were borne out by the student's ultimate positive adjustment to the Riverview School. Unfortunately, there was little evidence presented to support what was perhaps the main benefit of the residential component of the placement—separation of the student from her family to reinforce and promote the development of her academic, social, and emotional functioning and her independence as a person.

Triton Regional School District and Georgetown School District, BSEA #07-0082, 12 MSER 328 (2006), presented another complex factual history where, as in Middleborough, supra, the ultimate result was questionable, though reflective of a lack of sufficient proof by the parents. This case involved a 17-year-old 11 th- grade student whose parents lived in Georgetown but who attended Triton through sixth grade and the first three weeks of seventh grade as a school-choice student. According to his mother, he was a straight- A student through his sixth-grade year but was gradually evidencing socially immature behaviors, difficulty interacting with peers, problems with transitions, and difficulty with managing his homework and written work in general. He also misinterpreted the intentions of peers, had a low tolerance for the behaviors of others, could not maintain perspective, and tended to be on the periphery of social groupings.

After three weeks of seventh grade, his mother observed him to be extremely anxious, depressed, and self-isolated. He developed a social phobia that prevented him from going to school. He stayed at home for medical reasons and received the services of a tutor throughout his seventh-grade year. The following year, Triton placed him at the Hillside School, where he repeated seventh grade and experienced significant progress socially and academically. He continued there for eighth grade but decided to attend a new school for ninth grade where he could spend all four years of high school, since Hillside ended after ninth grade. He went to the Eagle Hill School in the summer and began at the Forman School in September, after the Triton TEAM determined that he required a residential special-education placement. He was successful at Forman until the spring, when he became fatigued and unable to be in school the entire day. Forman would not allow him to return until he could do a full day and, due to his anxieties, he was unable to return.

The Triton TEAM reconvened and placed him as a residential student at Franklin Academy, an unapproved day and boarding school in Connecticut, specializing in serving students with nonverbal learning disabilities. By all reports, he was successful at this placement, academically, socially and emotionally. Franklin Academy, however, refused to participate in the "sole source process" necessary for public funding, so a private funding method was worked out among Triton, Georgetown, and the parents, pending a three-year re-evaluation and a search for an approved placement. The TEAM met after the three-year re-evaluation and made a finding of ineligibility. Triton also tried to take the position that Triton's high school, not Franklin, was the stay-put placement, but it did not prevail on that issue.

The Hearing Officer first addressed the issue of eligibility and found that the student's "anxiety disorder and social skills issues [both of which she found to have been longstanding] qualified as a serious emotional disturbance," rendering him eligible for special-education services. Added to this was that "his characteristics of a non-verbal learning disability qualify as a ‘neurological impairment' under the [above-quoted] state regulations." She found both disabilities to interfere with his ability to make effective progress in the Triton setting, though he was successful at Franklin. The Hearing Officer found that Franklin offered a setting specifically designed to address his deficits. She noted that even at Franklin, he had "melt-downs."

She then concluded that the evidence presented by the parents was insufficient to counter Triton's position that the student no longer required the residential setting offered by Franklin. This seems anomalous after the Hearing Officer based her eligibility finding in part on the fact that he would not make effective progress without an IEP and was making progress at Franklin Academy because of its specialized and highly structured program. Also, it is equally anomalous that the Hearing Officer ruled against a continuation of the Franklin placement because of the impressive gains he made there. Clearly, as was noted by the Hearing Officer regarding the issue of "effective progress," he would have difficulty continuing those gains without the structure and specialized approach offered by the Franklin Academy program. It would have been prudent for the parents to present some current expert opinions on these issues, with less reliance on the lengthy history of voluntary residential placements by Triton. Without such opinions, and in the face of recent testing by Triton, the parents risked the outcome they received.

School-district responsibility where parents live in separate districts

In Dighton-Rehoboth Public Schools and Fall River Public School, BSEA #07-0756, 12 MSER 269 (2006), the Hearing Officer was asked to rule on which district was potentially responsible for the student's placement at the Eagle Hill School, following a hearing request by the parents asking for funding for their unilateral placement. Dighton-Rehoboth also asked DOE to make an assignment of responsibility as between the two districts. The Hearing Officer ultimately deferred on making a ruling, pending the outcome of the DOE assignment process. Nevertheless, the Hearing Officer conducted a preliminary analysis and found that Fall River would likely not be found to be a necessary party, if the facts presented to DOE were consistent with those presented by the parties in the case. In reaching that conclusion, the Hearing Officer relied on the interpretation of 28 CMR 10(2)(a)(2) contained in Fall River Public Schools, BSEA #06-4240, 12 MSER 123 (2006), that, in sum, where primary physical custody is with one parent, and where the student actually lives with that parent most of the week, the district where that parent resides will be responsible.

Assignment of surrogate parents

In Holyoke Public Schools, BSEA #06-5994, 12 MSER 272 (2006), the Hearing Officer decided that the responsibility of an LEA to request and DOE to assign a surrogate parent for a child applies only when the child is in the custody of a state agency or when the location of the child's parents is unknown. Such responsibility does not extend to situations where the child's parents are simply unresponsive. The only way for a surrogate parent to be assigned in such a circumstance is through the court system, typically by way of a CHINS petition, which is what had occurred in this case.

Stay put

In Triton Regional School District, BSEA #07-0082, 12 MSER 274 (2006), the Hearing Officer found that a verbal rejection of a proposed IEP was sufficient to trigger the parents' stay-put rights, and that the fact that the last agreed-upon placement was in an unapproved residential school (the Eagle Hill School) which refused to cooperate with the special-education process did not disqualify it from being the "stay put" placement.

In Bedford Public Schools, BSEA #07-1190, 12 MSER 278 (2006), the Hearing Officer ruled that whether or not the parents were aware of the consequences of their accepting a placement, the placement they accepted became the stay-put placement.

Parents' efforts to control the specific providers and the timing of services

In Norfolk Public Schools, BSEA #07-1421, 12 MSER 296 (2006), the parent objected to the district's replacing the student's behavioral specialist with someone new. The current behavioral specialist was named in the student 's IEP so that the parent was able to successfully invoke her stay-put rights. The issue before the Hearing Officer concerned whether the replacement specialist had a sufficient knowledge of ASL. The Hearing Officer first determined that the district has broad discretion on whom to hire. The parties then agreed to a transition process with a neutral third party making an independent determination of the sufficiency of the knowledge of the new provider of ASL to be able to work with the student.

In Scituate Public Schools, BSEA #07-0698, 12 MSER 304 (2006), the parents, who were requesting sensory-integration OT prior to the beginning of the school day (rather than during the school day) and reading-comprehension work after school (instead of during the school day) with Lindamood-Bell techniques and trained staff, did not attend the hearing. The Hearing Officer ruled that the proposed scheduling was reasonable and that Lindamood Bell was unnecessary.

In Ipswich Public School, BSEA #07-0962, 12 MSER 336 (2006), the parent tried to argue that the district's ABA provider was unqualified and that an out-of-district placement was required. The Hearing Officer found that the district's program was appropriate and the ABA provider sufficiently qualified, based on the district's evidence and the parent's lack thereof. The proceeding seemed to stem in part from distrust by the parent of the service provider because of an incident where her son's asthma acted up because of over-exertion, after the provider had been warned of that possibility by the parent. Because of the parent's distrust of the provider, the parent stopped the services on various occasions. This weakened the parent's position because the parent's proof of lack of progress through post-testing was rendered suspect because of the many interruptions of the services by the parent. In general, it was difficult to determine any fault on the part of the district and the district's provider because the parent interfered with the provision of services. This interference undermined the parent's case for a change of providers.

District's unilateral attempt to change an accepted IEP

In Dennis-Yarmouth Public Schools, BSEA #07-1284, 12 MSER 308 (2006), the 14-year-old multi-disabled student was on an IEP providing for home tutoring for all of his academic classes. The IEP provided for all services to be provided in the tutoring setting, though there had been discussion at the TEAM meeting of reintegrating the student into a substantially separate classroom in the high school. This IEP was accepted by the parents. Subsequently, a new special-education director was hired who declared, without a TEAM meeting, that she would not honor the placement specified in the accepted IEP, and instead treated the parents' acceptance of the home tutoring as a rejection of the substantially separate classroom and requested a hearing before the BSEA.

In granting the parents' motion for summary judgment, the Hearing Officer found that since the IEP had been accepted by the parents, the law required that it be fully and immediately implemented. She also ruled that the proper way for a district to have raised the issue of an accepted IEP that it believed was not providing FAPE would have been to convene a TEAM meeting and offer an alternative IEP. Because of its failure to engage in that process, the district's request for a hearing was dismissed.

Parent non-participation after filing a hearing request

East Bridgewater Public Schools, BSEA #07-1364, 12 MSER 346 (2006), is a case where the parents requested a hearing but failed to participate in the appeal process. This resulted in a waste of time and a dismissal of the hearing request with prejudice.

In Agawam Public Schools, BSEA #07-1507, 12 MSER 347 (2006), the District filed a hearing requesting a determination of its responsibility to override the parents' lack of consent for a three-year re-evaluation. The parents had indicated that special-education services were no longer needed because the student was making effective progress. Because termination of a student's eligibility for special education normally requires a prior re-evaluation, the district requested the hearing to determine its responsibility. Reviewing the applicable regulation, the Hearing Officer determined that since there was no allegation by the district of a denial of FAPE resulting from the parents' lack of consent, it was unnecessary for the district to conduct a three-year re-evaluation.

Conclusion

This review illustrates the wide range of issues heard by the BSEA and the care given to each one. Of particular note are the cases that involve the application of the FAPE analysis to disputes about placement. These cases provide helpful insights into the nature of the evidence required to sustain a party's burden of proof.

[1] The parents in this case were represented by Joseph B. Green, Esq., of Kotin, Crabtree & Strong, LLP.

K O T I N ,  C R A B T R E E  & S T R O N G ,  L L P

One Bowdoin Square
Boston, Massachusetts 02114-2925

Voice:  617-227-7031
Facsimile:  617-367-2988
TTY:  617-720-3558
Email:  kcs@kcslegal.com