Cjn v. Minneapolis Public Schools, 02-1261.

• Decision Date: 21 March 2003
• Docket Number: No. 02-1261.,02-1261.
• Citation: 323 F.3d 630
• Parties: CJN, by and through his Parent and Natural Guardian SKN, Appellant, v. MINNEAPOLIS PUBLIC SCHOOLS, Special School District No. 1; Minneapolis Board of Education; Catherine Shreves, Chair; Carol Johnson, Superintendent, in their representative capacities, Appellees. Children's Law Center of Minnesota; ARC Minnesota; ARC Hennepin-Carver, Amici on Behalf of Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

323 F.3d 630

CJN, by and through his Parent and Natural Guardian SKN, Appellant, v. MINNEAPOLIS PUBLIC SCHOOLS, Special School District No. 1; Minneapolis Board of Education; Catherine Shreves, Chair; Carol Johnson, Superintendent, in their representative capacities, Appellees.

Children's Law Center of Minnesota; ARC Minnesota; ARC Hennepin-Carver, Amici on Behalf of Appellant.

No. 02-1261.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: October 11, 2002.

Filed: March 21, 2003.

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Amy Jane Goetz, argued, St. Paul, Minnesota (Margaret O'Sullivan Kane, on the brief), for appellant.

Laura Tubbs Booth, argued, Minneapolis, Minnesota (Eric J. Magnuson, on the brief), for appellee.

Before MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, MAGILL, and BYE, Circuit Judges.

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

This case raises the question, among others, of whether a disabled student, whom we shall call CJN, received a free, appropriate public education (FAPE) in his third-grade year as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), 20 U.S.C. §§ 1400 — 1487. The district court¹ held that he did, focusing on CJN's academic progress and the continuous efforts to tailor his individualized education plan (IEP) to his behavioral challenges. Because we agree with the district court that CJN received a FAPE, and agree as well with its assessment of related issues, we affirm.

I.

As part of providing a FAPE under the IDEA, a school must formulate an IEP tailored to the disabled child's unique needs. 20 U.S.C. § 1412. For an IEP to pass substantive muster, it must be "reasonably calculated to enable the child to receive educational benefits." Hendrick Hudson Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176, 206-07, 102 S.Ct. 3034, 73 L.Ed.2d 690 (1982).

CJN is an eleven-year-old boy with lesions in his brain and a long history of psychiatric illness. A special education student in the Minneapolis Public Schools, Special School District No. 1 (District) since kindergarten, CJN has consistently had behavioral difficulties while nonetheless progressing academically at an average rate.

At the beginning of his third-grade year in September, 2000, CJN was placed in a special program for elementary needs (SPEN) classroom at Keewaydin Elementary School (moving with a teacher from his prior school) while he awaited the results of a functional behavior assessment and an occupational therapy evaluation. Within a few weeks, he had transferred to Elana Schroeder's SPEN classroom, because it provided more structure and because her students functioned at a higher academic level. In light of CJN's educational needs, Ms. Schroeder offered him reduced homework assignments, more time to complete assignments, positive reinforcement for meeting minimal requirements, and a so-called token economy system for reinforcing good behavior.

CJN nevertheless misbehaved in Ms. Schroeder's classroom many times, leading to him being given "time-outs" and even to being physically restrained. Most episodes of restraint were for less than a minute, but there were six days on which CJN was restrained for five or more minutes: Restraint was used after CJN began kicking others, hitting staff with pencils, or banging his head against the wall. On one occasion in December, a behavioral outburst led to police intervention and a period of hospitalization for CJN. This was his last day at Keewaydin.

CJN's IEP team convened in October, 2000, to discuss his evaluation results and recent misbehavior and again in November to discuss his behavioral goals and the procedures to be followed if CJN required restraint. Immediately after the holiday break, CJN's IEP team decided that he would divide his time between Whittier Elementary School and a day treatment program. At Whittier, CJN was to receive the help of a one-to-one paraprofessional and was to participate in a point reward system to reinforce good behavior. CJN attended Whittier for only seven half-days, however, because an episode occurred that required him to be taken to a local crisis center. The District and his mother then agreed to instruction at home, but, a day after that instruction began, his mother unilaterally decided to enroll CJN in Calvin Academy, a private school that serves disabled and "at-risk" students.

CJN's mother then filed a complaint with the Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning, seeking, among other things, a declaration that the District had not provided CJN with a FAPE and asking for reimbursement for his private school tuition. As part of this proceeding, several independent evaluators analyzed CJN, the principal evaluation being provided by Dr. Richard Ziegler. In March, the IEP team reviewed Dr. Ziegler's summary and proposed that CJN be placed in a "Public Separate Day School setting" which could provide more mental health services than Whittier. CJN has continued to have significant behavioral difficulties at Calvin Academy.

Based on 290 "findings of fact," an independent hearing officer (HO) found that although CJN had received a FAPE through the second grade, he had not received one from September 2000 to February 2001, mainly because of the lack of sufficient positive behavioral interventions during the latter period and the amount of physical restraint that he was subjected to. In addition to granting other relief, the HO ordered the District to reimburse CJN's mother for his private school tuition and placed him at Calvin through the 2002-2003 academic school year. On appeal, a state hearing review officer (HRO) reversed the HO's decision that CJN did not receive a FAPE from September 2000 to February 2001, adopting 286 of the HO's "findings of fact" and making thirty-five more of his own. The district court affirmed the HRO's decision, giving due weight to the HRO's conclusions and focusing on CJN's academic progress and his IEP team's continuous efforts to refine his IEPs to account for his behavioral challenges in its eight IEP team meetings between August 29, 2000, and March 2, 2001.

II.

CJN first argues that the district court erred by not deferring to the HO's conclusions of law and credibility determinations. In particular, CJN contends that the HRO wrongly reversed the HO's credibility determinations when adopting the thirty-five additional "findings of fact" and making its "conclusions of law," upon which the district court relied.

Under the IDEA, a district court must review the state administrative record, hear additional evidence if requested, and, "basing its decision on the preponderance of the evidence, shall grant such relief as the court determines is appropriate." 20 U.S.C. § 1415(i)(2)(B). Although a district court should independently determine whether the child has received a FAPE, it must give "due weight" to agency decision-making. See Independent Sch. Dist. No. 283 v. S.D., 88 F.3d 556, 561 (8th Cir.1996). "The district court must give `due weight' because the administrative panel had an opportunity to observe the demeanor of the witnesses and because the court should not substitute its own educational policy for those of the school authorities that they review." Strawn v. Missouri State Bd. of Educ., 210 F.3d 954, 958 (8th Cir. 2000). When, as here, the relevant state has a two-tier administrative review system, we have recognized that "[w]here there is a conflict between the findings and conclusions of the hearing panel and the final reviewing officer, a court may choose to credit the hearing panel's findings based on observation of the witnesses." Fort Zumwalt Sch. Dist. v. Clynes, 119 F.3d 607, 610 (8th Cir.1997), cert. denied, 523 U.S. 1137, 118 S.Ct. 1840, 140 L.Ed.2d 1090 (1998).

CJN contends that the HO properly discredited the views of the school authorities and, thus, the HRO erred by believing them and adopting "unsupported credibility-based findings of fact and conclusions." We reject this characterization of what the HRO did, however, since neither his additional findings nor his conclusions were based on credibility determinations different from those of the HO, much less on a different view of the underlying facts.

We admit that some confusion arises because both the HO and the HRO use the terms "findings of fact" and "conclusions of law" in an unconventional fashion. For instance, the vast majority of both the HO's and HRO's "findings of fact" are not facts that the HO or HRO actually found, but rather statements of what different witnesses testified to during the twelve days of hearings before the HO. We believe that what the HO and the HRO actually found as facts are located in their "conclusions of law," intermixed with their actual legal conclusions.

Perhaps, given the 3000-page HO hearing transcript, it would be reasonable to believe that both the HO and HRO were endorsing as findings the testimony that they recited. But even if we were to draw that inference, nothing in the record indicates that the HO and HRO believed different witnesses to be credible or believed that different events occurred. In most instances, the HRO's "findings of fact" simply rehearsed matters that were already acknowledged in the HO's "findings of fact."

The HRO's "conclusions of law" also do not indicate that the HRO had a view of any witness's credibility that differed from the HO's, as revealed by a close analysis of the "conclusions of law" on which the HRO and the HO differed. Although two of the HRO's conclusions speak of the "credible evidence," neither rested on the existence of any fact that the HO did not acknowledge as well. Indeed, in our best estimation, we interpret the phrase "credible evidence" in these two conclusions to mean "evidence that suffices under the law." Consequently, we interpret the HRO's statements such as "there is no credible evidence that these reviews ... failed to adequately assess the appropriateness of the IEP" to mean only that h...