Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Waiver Agreement Authority of Hearing Officer

West Chester Area Sch. Dist. v. A.M., PICS Case No. 17-1057 (Pa. Commw. June 19, 2017) Simpson, J. (24 pages).

Hearing officer correctly denied the school district's motion to enforce a waiver agreement between student's parents and the district because the hearing officer correctly found that he lacked the authority to enforce such agreements. Affirmed.

Parents disputed the classes the school recommended for their child at the child's November 2015 IEP meeting. The school recommended that student take academic level courses and parents wanted the child to remain in the honors curriculum because the academic courses would put student in classes with classmates who had bullied him in the past. Parents and district entered into a waiver agreement in which school allowed student to remain in honors classes, even though he was at risk of failing some of the classes, and parents agreed not to file any due process claims based on the decision to allow student to remain in the honors classes. The parents later brought a due process complaint for the period covered by the agreement and district filed a motion to dismiss based on the waiver. At the hearing, parents argued that the waiver was signed under duress and was unenforceable. The hearing officer found that parents' proof of duress was inadequate but also found that the enforceability of the waiver agreement was an issue for the courts and denied the district's motion to enforce the agreement, granted district's motion to file an action in the courts to enforce the agreement and scheduled a hearing on the parents' consolidated claims. District appealed the hearing officer's "final order" and filed a complaint seeking declaratory judgment.

District argued that parents entered into a legally binding contract waving their right to seek any claims or remedies for the period November 2015 through August 2016. District noted that parents were represented by counsel during the time before and after the November 2015 IEP meeting and waiver agreement and received the benefit of the bargain for five months before raising the duress claim. Parents alleged that they signed the agreement because the school threatened to immediately revise student's schedule if they did not sign it. The court found that hearing officer correctly determined that parents did not present sufficient evidence of duress.

District also challenged the hearing officer's finding that he lacked the legal authority under the IDEA to enforce the waiver agreement. The district asserted that there was no explicit statutory prohibition on hearing officers' authority to enforce settlement agreements. The court however, noted that the IDEA specifically provided for enforcement of settlement agreements in "any State court of competent jurisdiction or in a district court." While the IDEA regulations provided that nothing prevented a state educational agency "from using other mechanisms to seek enforcement," Pennsylvania had not provided any such other mechanisms.

The court declined to exercise ancillary jurisdiction and resolve the injunctive and declaratory relief issues and remanded the matter to the ODR for a hearing to address the parents' complaints and decide, if or how the waiver agreement impacted the parents' complaints.