Federal regs provide guidance on IDEA compliance

“We’re generally pleased with the final rules,” said Reginald Felton, NSBA’s director of federal relations. “Our concern was that the regulations stay consistent with the law, and the Education Department seems to have done so. That should help clarify potential areas of confusion for local school officials.”

The regulations, published Aug. 14 in the Federal Register, outline the procedures that schools must follow to comply with Part B of IDEA, which deals with many areas of K-12 education. The rules go into effect 60 days after publication.

Last year, NSBA offered a dozen recommendations to federal officials about how to address specific requirements under the law. According to Felton, the main message to the Education Department was “to allow maximum flexibility and interpretation by local school districts.” One important regulatory issue for NSBA dealt with procedures to resolve conflicts between school officials and parents over the evaluation and placement of children requiring special education services, Felton said.

Under the IDEA reauthorization, both parties must participate in a resolution session -- an attempt to negotiate a consensus on future placement -- before proceeding with a more formal, adversarial due process hearing to resolve the issue.

The concern for NSBA was that, if a parent did not attend the resolution session, issues concerning the placement of a child could be delayed indefinitely, Felton said. Under the final regulations, if a parent do-es not meet with school officials within 30 days after a concern is filed, the regulations provide additional options for school officials.

“Without this language, the absence of parents at the resolution hearing could have the unintended effect of maintaining the status quo indefinitely and delaying a re-evaluation that might indicate a need to change the child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP),” Felton said.

Other regulations clarified responsibility for placement of a child. While parents may choose, at their own expense, to send a child to a private school, the right to a publicly funded education in the “least restrictive environment” belongs to the child, and thus the child’s placement must be decided by the child’s IEP team with the participation of parents.

“These improvements should significantly reduce the impact of adversarial relationships that sometimes existed between families and school officials,” Felton said.

On some issues, however, the regulations do not fully accommodate the concerns of local school boards. For example, the rules clarify the qualifications requirements for all special education teachers, as NSBA requested, but the regulations do not apply to teachers hired by private schools or public charter schools.

“This perpetuates a dual system of teacher qualifications,” Felton said. “If the rationale for these rules is to ensure that federal funds are allocated to programs using highly qualified teachers, then the rationale holds as well for non-public school teachers who provide students with services supported by public funding.”

One concern in the regulations is the newly created responsibility for public school districts to identify, locate, and evaluate children with disabilities who are placed by their parents in private schools located within a district’s boundaries. In the past, school districts were responsible only for parentally placed children who resided in the district.

The rule is advantageous for private schools, which now only have to coordinate with the school district that serves their area. But it promises to add to the administrative and financial burden of public school districts.

“This change imposes a disproportionate workload on local school districts if they just happen to have private schools inside their district boundaries,” NSBA wrote to federal officials last year. “Small school districts and large urban districts could be overwhelmed by the expanded scope and responsibility and extra costs.”

All in all, however, the regulations allow local school boards to take advantage of the significant improvements made in IDEA’s 2004 reauthorization, legislation that also largely accommodated the concerns of NSBA, Felton said.