Oregon Public Broadcasting

The highest court in the country has delivered a victory to a Forest Grove family. The family wanted the Forest Grove school district to pay to send their special-needs son to private school, as Rob Manning reports.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Forest Grove School District is on the hook for at least some of the private school costs for the teenager known in court documents only as "T.A."

The case actually goes all the way back to 2001, when a panel of Forest Grove staffers evaluated T.A.

Bob Joondeph is the executive director of Disability Rights Oregon, which backed the family’s case.

Bob Joondeph: “Oh, we’re very happy with the outcome.”

Attorney Angela Hungerford represented Forest Grove schools in the case.

Angela Hungerford: “In 2001, he was evaluated to see if he was eligible under the IDEA – which is the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act. The team found him not eligible, and everyone agreed with that decision, including his parents, who were part of the process.”

Hungerford says the parents never requested another evaluation. Two years later they removed their son from Forest Grove High, enrolled him at the Mt. Bachelor Academy boarding school, in Prineville, and asked Forest Grove to foot the bill.

Angela Hungerford: “Which at that time was running somewhere in the neighborhood of $5000 a month.”

The school district refused to pay, arguing that T.A. hadn’t been identified as “special ed,” and hadn’t received services at Forest Grove. The family then appealed to an administrative judge, with the support of special ed advocates, like Bob Joondeph.

Bob Joondeph: “The administrative judge decided that the child did have a disability, that the child was entitled to special education services, that the school district had not provided them, and that the parents were justified in placing the child in a private school where the student could get the services he needed.”

Over the next six years, the case bounced up the legal food chain – to a district court, an appeals court, and finally the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Forest Grove attorney, Angela Hungerford, argued the language in the disability law says families must first exhaust public school options, but T.A.’s family never appealed.

Angela Hungerford: “The place I can’t get past in the Supreme Court’s ruling is that they don’t deal with the actual language. If you read Souter’s dissent, he says ‘look at the language’ it says ‘students who previously received special education services’.”

Family advocate, Bob Joondeph, says the Supreme Court majority was looking at a bigger question.  

Bob Joondeph: “The Supreme Court decided that there was nothing in federal law that prohibited a family from being reimbursed for private school services, if a school district did not properly evaluate a student, and did not offer that student what’s called ‘a free and appropriate public education’.”

Hungerford fears the decision may encourage families who might otherwise work with their local public school on a special ed program, to instead enroll their child in a private school and bill the district.

Joondeph counters that few parents will go through that. He says instead, school districts should be extra careful now, to do better evaluations.

The case isn’t quite over. The district court is expected to release an opinion any day about how much the school district owes. Once attorney’s fees are factored in, the school system’s bill could reach half a million dollars.