T.F. v. Special School Dist. St. Louis Co., 05-1765.

• Decision Date: 02 June 2006
• Docket Number: No. 05-1765.,05-1765.
• Parties: T.F.; G.F.; S.F., a minor, by his mother and next friend, G.F., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT OF ST. LOUIS COUNTY; Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 816

449 F.3d 816

T.F.; G.F.; S.F., a minor, by his mother and next friend, G.F., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT OF ST. LOUIS COUNTY; Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 05-1765.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: January 11, 2006.

Filed: June 2, 2006.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Counsel who presented argument on behalf of the appellant was Michael A. Gross of St. Louis, Missouri.

Counsel who presented argument on behalf of appellee Special School District was Robert G. Thomeczek of St. Louis, Missouri. Counsel who presented argument on behalf of appellee Missouri Department of Education was Sarah E. Ledgerwood of Jefferson City, Missouri. Also appearing on the brief was Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon.

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, McMILLIAN^* and MELLOY, Circuit Judges.

LOKEN, Chief Judge.

The parents of S.F., a student with educational disabilities, unilaterally placed their son in out-of-state private residential schools after the Special School District of St. Louis ("the District") refused to place S.F. in a full-time residential program. The family commenced these proceedings seeking relief under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act ("IDEA"), 20 U.S.C. §§ 1400 et seq., on the ground that the District had denied S.F. a free appropriate public education. A Missouri hearing panel and the district court¹ denied all relief. The family appeals the denial of their claim for reimbursement of the out-of-state private school tuition. We review this mixed question of law and fact de novo. Missouri Dep't of Elem. & Secondary Educ. v. Springfield R-12 Sch. Dist., 358 F.3d 992, 998 (8th Cir.2004). But we must give "due weight" to the outcome of the administrative proceedings and must be "careful to avoid imposing [our] view of preferable educational methods upon the States." Board of Educ. v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176, 206-07, 102 S.Ct. 3034, 73 L.Ed.2d 690 (1982). Applying this deferential standard, we agree with the district court that the District provided S.F. a free appropriate public education. We therefore affirm.

I.

S.F. suffers from disabling psychological conditions that have been diagnosed as including pervasive developmental disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. His educational assessments include language impaired, learning disabled in written expression, and "educational autism." S.F. attended local public schools through the fourth grade, participating in mainstream classrooms and receiving several hours of special education services per week under individualized education programs ("IEPs") developed by the District. Behavioral problems developed in the third grade and continued in the fourth grade. Though his fourth grade teacher recommended that S.F. move on to fifth grade, his parents instead enrolled him in the Churchill School, a private school for children with learning disabilities. S.F. performed well at Churchill in the fifth grade, but his behavior deteriorated in the sixth grade. His parents then enrolled him at Metropolitan School, another private school for children with learning disabilities. The parents did not use the IEP process in placing S.F. at Churchill and then at Metropolitan.

S.F. attended Metropolitan for seventh grade. His academic performance was satisfactory but behavior problems persisted. Metropolitan told the parents that S.F. should attend a different school for eighth grade but agreed he could attend Metropolitan the first semester while the parents arranged a different placement. S.F. was sent home or suspended for bad behavior so often during the first half of eighth grade (the fall of 2001) that he was essentially home schooled. The parents withdrew S.F. from Metropolitan at the end of that semester and sought services from the District, which helped arrange an interim homebound instruction program for the second half of eighth grade. At the end of that semester, S.F.'s special education teachers said that he had progressed academically and was well-behaved.

In early 2002, the District completed a re-evaluation of S.F. and began discussing an IEP for the upcoming ninth grade school year with his parents. The parents argued that a full-time residential program was the only way S.F. could receive a free appropriate public education. When the District disagreed, the parents asked the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education ("the Department") for a due process hearing. The District completed its proposed IEP on May 27, 2002. The plan called for S.F. to spend fourteen hours per week in Project Achieve at S.F.'s local public high school and twelve and a half hours at Epworth Center, a nearby private facility, with an additional four hours of language therapy, social work, and psychological counseling.

Unhappy with the IEP, and convinced that S.F. needed a full-time residential program, the parents enrolled S.F. at Pathways School, a private residential institution in Pennsylvania. S.F. was at Pathways from June until November 2002, when the school decided it was not a good fit because S.F. had not progressed and had negative interactions with other students. The parents then enrolled S.F. in the Chamberlain School, a private residential facility in Massachusetts. In February 2003, S.F. and his parents amended their request for a due process hearing, seeking reimbursement for tuition and other expenses at Churchill, Metropolitan, Pathways, and Chamberlain.²

After a hearing, the three-member administrative panel unanimously denied relief. The panel first denied the claim for reimbursement of tuition at Churchill and Metropolitan on the ground that the District was providing S.F. a free appropriate public education when the parents withdrew him from public school after fourth grade. The parents sought judicial review of that decision but abandoned this claim in the district court. The panel then denied the claim for reimbursement of tuition at Pathways and Chamberlain on the ground that the May 2002 IEP provided S.F. a free appropriate public education. In reviewing this decision, the district court allowed the parents to supplement the administrative record and granted the District's motion to join the Department as a defendant. See Springfield, 358 F.3d at 998, 1000-02. The court then granted defendants' motion for summary judgment, giving "due weight" to the findings of the educational experts on the administrative panel and concluding that the May 2002 IEP was reasonably calculated to provide S.F. some educational benefit. The family appeals that decision.

II.

The IDEA as amended in 1997 "does not require a local educational agency to pay for the cost of education . . . at a private school or facility if that agency made a free appropriate public education available to the child and the parents elected to place the child in such private school or facility." Jasa v. Millard Pub. Sch. Dist. No. 17, 206 F.3d 813, 815 (8th Cir. 2000), quoting 20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(10)(C)(i). Therefore, parents who unilaterally "enroll their child in private school without the approval of the public...