Board of Ed. of Town of Manchester v. Connecticut State Bd. of Ed.
| Decision Date | 26 February 1980 |
| Citation | 427 A.2d 846,179 Conn. 694 |
| Parties | BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the TOWN OF MANCHESTER v. CONNECTICUT STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION et al. |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
Thomas J. Prior, Manchester, for appellant (plaintiff).
Robert W. Garvey, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom, on brief, were Carl R. Ajello, Atty. Gen., and Bernard F. McGovern, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee (named defendant).
Hollace P. Brooks, Hartford, for appellees (defendants John Lahda et al.).
Before COTTER, C. J., and LOISELLE, BOGDANSKI, PETERS and HEALEY, JJ. COTTER, Chief Justice.
As a matter of first impression, we are required to interpret several provisions of the General Statutes which concern special education. See General Statutes §§ 10-76a 10-76q. This case primarily involves the special education needs of one of the defendants, Charles Lahda. The evidence presented before the hearing board of the state board of education revealed that Charles is a multihandicapped child who was identified as needing special education because he is retarded and has speech and gross motor coordination problems. Prior to September, 1976, he had been enrolled in a special education program at Keeney School, a public school operated by the plaintiff Manchester board of education. Beginning in 1974, he began to exhibit problematic behavior in the classroom. Charles' behavior problems became more severe during the 1975-76 school year and his behavior constituted a danger to the safety of the other children in the class as well as a disruptive element in the classroom and playground.
Charles' parents became increasingly concerned that the special education program in which he was enrolled was inadequate to meet his needs and that he was retrogressing. In February, 1976, a planning and placement team within the school, his parents and his teacher felt that the hiring of a teacher's aide for Charles might ameliorate his problems. Before an aide could be hired, however, the approval of a system-wide central planning and placement team was required and when a meeting with this group was delayed, 1 Charles' parents, after contacting the Manchester board of education, requested a state mediator, pursuant to General Statutes § 10-76h(b)(1). The mediation session in June, 1976, failed to reach a solution and, pursuant to General Statutes §§ 10-76h(a) (2) and 10-76h(b)(2), a review by the state board of education was requested on July 14, 1976.
The hearing by the state board of education, originally scheduled for August 31, 1976, was continued until October 26, 1976 at the request of the Manchester board of education. Since the school year was beginning and because Charles' parents believed that the special education program provided by the Manchester board of education was inappropriate for his needs, in September of 1976 they enrolled him in the Intensive Education Center, a private nonsectarian institution in West Hartford, which Charles' parents had investigated in the spring of 1976. 2
Following the October 26, 1976 hearing, the hearing board of the state board of education, in its decision dated December 21, 1976, concluded that "the educational program prescribed and implemented for Charles, in spite of the intense efforts on the part of the Manchester educational staff, did not adequately meet his needs" and that there was "little reason to believe that significant programmatic change would have taken place in the 1976-1977 school year." It found that the staff of the Intensive Educational Center had not observed any inappropriate classroom behavior by Charles and that the Center's ability to deal effectively with his behavior allowed for a better prognosis for his academic growth. The Manchester board of education was ordered to pay all reasonable educational costs including transportation for Charles Lahda to the Intensive Educational Center for the academic year 1976-77.
The Manchester board of education appealed the state board of education's decision to the Court of Common Pleas and sought review of that decision as provided for in the Uniform Administrative Procedure Act, General Statutes § 4-183. That court concluded that the state board had acted within the authority conferred on it by statute and dismissed the appeal, and the plaintiff appealed from the judgment rendered in favor of the defendants.
The plaintiff's sole argument on this appeal is that the lower court erred because the statutory provisions relating to special education in the circumstances of this case give no authority to the state board of education to order the Manchester board of education to assume the costs of Charles Lahda's special education program at a private facility. The statutory authority granted the hearing board is found in General Statutes § 10-76h(e), which reads in relevant part: "The hearing board shall have the authority to confirm, modify, or reject any diagnosis, evaluation, educational program prescribed, or exclusion or exemption from school privileges and prescribed alternate special educational programs for the child, and shall inform the parent or guardian or the commissioner of children and youth services, as the case may be, and the board of education of the school district of its decision ...." The plaintiff does not dispute the fact that the state hearing panel rejected the plaintiff's program, but nonetheless it contends that if a local program is rejected, § 10-76h(e) mandates that the hearing panel prescribe an alternate special education program for the local board to implement.
The plaintiff argues that General Statutes §§ 10-76d(a) and 10-76d(b)(1) and (2) place the primary burden of prescribing and providing suitable special education programs for eligible children on local boards of education. Further it notes that General Statutes § 10-76d(d) permits local school boards which cannot locally meet the special education needs of a child to contract with public or private schools outside the local system. The plaintiff claims that it should have been given the opportunity to consider outside placement as authorized by § 10-76d(d) since such placement existed as a possibility if the hiring of an aide was deemed unsuccessful. The plaintiff also contends that the actions of Charles' parents were unilateral in placing Charles in a private facility and such actions cannot obligate a local board to reimburse the parents.
Consequently, the thrust of the plaintiff's argument is twofold: (1) that the hearing panel's order, pursuant to § 10-76h(e), is without statutory authority because such an order conflicts with the statutorily mandated functions of the local board of education and § 10-76h(e) should be read in light of § 10-76d's provisions; (2) that even if the order were to be considered a prescription of an alternate program within the purview of § 10-76h(e), the action of Charles' parents in placing him in a private facility was unilateral and precluded reimbursement.
Although it is well-established that the legislature acts in view of existing relevant statutes and with the intention of creating one consistent body of law; State v. Murtha, 179 Conn. 463, 427 A.2d 807; Doe v. Institute of Living, 175 Conn. 49, 58, 392 A.2d 491; State v. White, 169 Conn. 223, 234, 363 A.2d 143; Cicala v. Administrator, 161 Conn. 362, 365, 288 A.2d 66; the plaintiff has not ventured widely enough to view the consistency provided for by existing relevant statutes in the circumstances of this case. Although the primary responsibility for providing special education for eligible students rests with local boards of education, General Statutes § 10-4 places the overall responsibility for educating Connecticut children, including those in need of special education, with the state board of education. General Statutes § 10-4a mandates that the state board, in supervising and controlling the educational interests of the state, be concerned that "each child shall have ... equal opportunity to receive a suitable program of educational experiences."
In the present case, consistently with the provisions of § 10-76d, the plaintiff endeavored to prescribe a suitable special education program for Charles Lahda. When, however, the adequacy of the program was questioned by his parents, §§ 10-76h(c) through 10-76h(e) clearly provide for the involvement of and action by the state board of education through a duly-established hearing board to fulfill the general mandate of § 10-4a that the state be concerned with ensuring each child's equal opportunity to receive a suitable program of educational experiences. 3
The hearing board's determination that Manchester's education program did not adequately meet Charles' needs and that the program was unlikely to undergo significant programmatic change in the 1976-77 school year is a clear rejection of that program within the authority provided for in § 10-76h(e). Once this rejection had been made, and in light of its finding that the Intensive Education Center provided an effective program for Charles which allowed "for a better prognosis regarding Charles' academic growth," 4 the hearing panel's order that the plaintiff pay all reasonable educational costs at the Intensive Education Center for the academic year 1976-77 must be viewed as a prescription of an alternate special education program within the purview of § 10-76h(e). There is certainly no prohibition in § 10-76h(e) against a prescription of private placement which is provided for as one method by which a local board of education may satisfy its obligation to provide special education. General Statutes § 10-76d(d). The hearing panel had found the Center's program adequate. Thereafter to require that Charles return to Manchester's program would have been to relegate him to a program it had deemed inadequate and would have thus been in contravention of the state board of education's duty to see that each child has an...
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