Gill v. Columbia 93 School District, 99-3807
| Decision Date | 10 April 2000 |
| Docket Number | No. 99-3807,99-3807 |
| Citation | 217 F.3d 1027 |
| Parties | (8th Cir. 2000) ALAN GILL, PARENT OF MATTHEW GILL, A MINOR; DEBORAH GILL, PARENT OF MATTHEW GILL, A MINOR, APPELLANTS, v. COLUMBIA 93 SCHOOL DISTRICT; MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION, APPELLEES. Submitted: |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]
[Copyrighted Material Omitted]
[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Before Wollman, Chief Judge, Murphy, Circuit Judge, and Goldberg 1, Judge.
The parents of Matthew Gill, a child with autism, brought this action against Columbia 93 School District (District) and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (Department) under the Individuals with Disabilities Act, 20 U.S.C. 1400 et seq. (IDEA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. 794 ( 504), and state law to challenge Matthew's education program. The district court 2 granted summary judgment to the District and dismissed the claims brought against the Department. The Gills appeal, and we affirm.
Matthew was born in Montana in October, 1992, fifteen weeks prematurely. He weighed less than two pounds at birth, and it became apparent over time that his development was impaired. After moving to Columbia, Missouri in the fall of 1994, the Gills enrolled Matthew in a Department program for young disabled children and their families. The program provided services such as speech and physical therapy and family counseling, and on the recommendation of a physician the Gills took Matthew for psychological evaluation in the spring and summer of 1995. Although specialists were reluctant to diagnose such a young child, they suggested that his impairments were consistent with a type of autism. They recommended that he be enrolled in an early education program for disabled children.
In the fall of 1995, shortly before Matthew's third birthday, a team including his parents, a teacher, and school therapists tailored a course of education for him. This course was summarized in a document called an individualized education program (IEP) which noted his developmental disabilities and offered him three half days of school each week and specialized therapy. The thirteen-page IEP set out a number of developmental goals and informed the Gills of their rights under IDEA. The Gills accepted the program, and Matthew began at Parkade Elementary School in a "self-contained classroom" where disabled children are taught primarily by a single teacher. In addition to the ordinary instruction, Matthew was given physical, occupational, and speech therapy. Matthew was initially uncomfortable interacting with fellow students, but his social anxiety diminished over the course of the school year. By the end of his summer program, Matthew had made progress toward several of the goals in his IEP.
In August 1996, Matthew was formally diagnosed with autism. The Gills claim to have communicated the diagnosis to Matthew's IEP team in September 1996, the month in which the team met to review his performance under the prior year's plan and to discuss goals for the new school year. The team revised Matthew's developmental goals and concluded that he was prepared to benefit from more time in school. It also recommended to the Gills that Matthew receive a more definitive psychological assessment in order to assist the ongoing efforts to develop an appropriate program. The Gills accepted these revisions. These changes were incorporated into the IEP governing Matthew's program, and Matthew began to receive three and a half additional hours in a classroom each week, as well as more speech, occupational, and physical therapy.
The Gills began to investigate alternative methods of instruction for autistic children during the fall of 1996, and they came to believe that Matthew should primarily be educated in a system of one-on-one training known as the Lovaas method. In early 1997 they hired private Lovaas therapists who began to instruct Matthew at home. His private therapy increased to thirty-five hours a week, and the Gills reduced his school attendance to two half days per week. Although the record indicates that Matthew's verbal skills improved during the spring of 1997, it also shows that his social skills began to decline.
In February 1997, the Gills asked the District to schedule a mid-year meeting to re-examine Matthew's education, to modify his school program, and to fund his private therapy program. The Gills believed that the course of instruction offered by the school was inadequate and asserted that Matthew required approximately forty hours of Lovaas therapy each week. They acknowledged that his home therapy would not teach him appropriate social interaction, but believed that a small amount of time in the classroom coupled with various private social interactions would take care of this aspect of his education.
The District Director of Special Education met with the Gills and Matthew's school teachers and therapists and also consulted with an expert on autism. At a March 21, 1997 meeting of the IEP team, the district director rejected the Gills' application for funding of Matthew's private program, but offered to make substantial modifications to his IEP immediately. She proposed increasing Matthew's time in the self-contained classroom to twelve hours each week and adding seventeen hours in a "reverse mainstream" classroom, in which non-disabled students are mixed in with disabled students. She also offered more one-on-one training in school and proposed hiring an additional aide for the classroom. These proposals were summarized in a new IEP which was dated March 21, 1997. Although the program did not satisfy the Gills, they agreed to implement the proposed services during those days when Matthew would attend school.
The IEP team continued to meet over the next ten months to work on Matthew's education plan, but the team members were unable to come to a consensus. The Gills persisted in asserting that Matthew should be instructed using the Lovaas method, but there is no evidence that they invited a Lovaas expert to participate in any of the meetings. The District believed that the home based program proposed by the Gills was not appropriate, in part because it would not allow Matthew to interact with non-disabled peers, and his IEP was substantially unchanged from March 21, 1997 until the end of the 1998-1999 school year.
In December 1997, while the IEP meetings were still ongoing, the Gills made a formal IDEA complaint to the Department. See 34 C.F.R. 300.507(a)(1). They alleged that the education program offered by the District in the March 21, 1997 IEP was not appropriate for Matthew. The Department convened an administrative hearing which took place over eight days in February, May, and June, 1998.
Two of the three administrative panel members were experts on special education; the chair was a lawyer who had led such panels previously. See Mo.Rev.Stat. 162.961(3). The witnesses included the Gills, as well as Matthew's teachers and therapists, and the Lovaas expert who had developed his private home program. There was much testimony about the methods used to educate Matthew in school and at home, the underlying pedagogical theories, and his performance under the respective programs. The Gills unsuccessfully sought to call two additional expert witnesses they had hired sometime after the March 21, 1997 IEP meeting. These experts had not participated in Matthew's program of therapy or the IEP discussions, but the Gills wished to call them to offer opinions concerning his education and the Lovaas method. They would have testified that in their view even after the March 21 modifications, the IEP offered by the District was not appropriate for Matthew and that he would have derived more benefit from the alternative program. The panel excluded their testimony on the basis that it was not relevant to the appropriateness of the March 21 IEP because it had not been brought up at that meeting. The Gills' offer of proof was put into the record, 3 one of their experts was permitted to testify about an article he had co-authored, and new expert testimony offered by the District was also excluded.
After receiving and evaluating all the evidence, the administrative panel found that the IEP offered by the District from March 21, 1997 until the end of the 1997-1998 school year had been appropriate for Matthew. It also found that the document outlining the plan should be rewritten to incorporate additional one-on-one therapy which the District had agreed to provide. Two of the three panel members voted for funding ten hours of weekly one-on-one training at home.
The Gills appealed the administrative decision in the federal district court. Their amended complaint challenged the appropriateness of the March 21, 1997 IEP which the administrative panel had reviewed. They also attacked the 1998-1999 program even though it was not the subject of the administrative proceeding, arguing that it was substantially similar to the March 1997 plan. The Gills argued that the District had improperly evaluated Matthew's disability, had failed to consult with autism experts, and had not fully notified them of their rights to be heard at IEP meetings. The Gills claimed that because the District had refused to provide Matthew with Lovaas method education, it had fallen short of its obligation to provide him with a free appropriate public education. The Gills also alleged that the Department had fallen short of its obligations under IDEA by failing to implement a system which would identify children with autism and ensure that they received appropriate early intervention. The Gills also complained about the exclusion by the administrative panel of some of their expert testimony and claimed that the...
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