New 9/21/2022 - Class action Complaint against Fairfax County Sch. Bd. and Virginia Dept. of Ed. alleges that from "2010 through July 2021 less than 1% of parents who initiated a due process hearing under the IDEA in Northern Virginia received a favorable ruling." Parents prevailed in 3 of 395 cases. Statewide parents prevailed in 13 of 847 cases. Over 20 years, "two thirds of the hearing officers have never ruled in favor of parents, not even once" [because the Virginia Department of Education] "carefully curated a group of twenty-two (22) hearing officers who nearly always rule in favor of school districts and against parents."

If the facts as alleged in the exhibits are true, this deliberate tilting of the scales of justice against children with disabilities is an affront to our system of justice and principles of due process.

The Complaint is available at: https://www.wrightslaw.com/law/pleadings/2022.0921.complaint.chaplick.v.virginia.doe.pdf

Comp Ed Required? On July 27, 2022, the Office for Civil Rights and Office of Special Education Programs hosted a webinar titled "Lessons from the Field - Providing Required Compensatory Services That Help Students with Disabilities in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic." Click here for the link to the recording.

From Wrightslaw, the law of "Comp Ed."

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