EdLawConnect Blog

Frequently, when a student is involved in the California juvenile dependency or delinquency courts the student’s LEA is unaware of the nature of the student’s involvement and not privy to information that is pertinent to the student’s educational success.  LEA’s are often unaware that they have the right to petition a juvenile court to release copies of juvenile court records for a student within ...

Over the years two questions have come up frequently regarding prior written notices to parents/legal guardians:

1.  When is a LEA required to provide prior written notice (“PWN”)?

2.  What constitutes a legally sufficient PWN?

Fortunately for LEAs, the IDEA and case law address both of these questions with some detail.

When Notice is Required

Under the IDEA a parent must be provided with prior written

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (“Section 504”) is a Congressional directive to schools receiving any federal funding to eliminate discrimination based on disability from all aspects of school operations. For a student to qualify for Section 504 protection the student must meet three criteria, which are (1) A mental or physical impairment (or ...

As many school districts, county offices of education and charter schools (“LEAs”) continue to face extreme financial hardships the proposition of having attorney’s fees awarded to an LEA for legal expenses associated with defending a due process hearing has becomes more alluring. While the IDEA allows LEAs to recover attorney’s fees, the circumstances under which the fees for an LEA can be ...

When the topic of service animals arises we generally think of the rights of the individual with a disability. It’s widely known that Title II of the American with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) establishes the right for persons with disabilities to utilize service animals. Title II requires public entities, including schools, to permit use of a dog or miniature horse to do work or perform tasks for the ...

Pursuant to the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (“IDEA”), Title 34 Code of Federal Regulations (“C.F.R.”) Section 300.502(b)(5), a student is entitled to an independent educational evaluation (“IEE”) at public expense when the public agency has conducted an evaluation with which the parent disagrees. The IDEA identifies two choices for a local education agency ...

Background
On January 6, 2009, a California Superior Court judge ruled that licensed nurses (i.e. credentialed school nurses, registered nurses or licensed vocational nurses) must be used to administer insulin to students. In so doing, the judge rejected the California Department of Education’s ("CDE") position that trained classroom staff (non-nurses) can be used to administer insulin. The judge's decision left school districts, SELPAs, and county offices of education throughout California wondering if they were now required to hire more nurses to administer insulin and perhaps other medications like Diastat.

In our April 2012 post we touched on the dangers of over-identifying and misidentifying students who may or may not be eligible for special education and related services. For May, we’ll explore the opposite side of the coin: failing to seek out and identify students.

The California Penal Code requires mandatory registration as a sex offender for persons convicted of specific sex offenses. The law provides a different list of offenses for persons convicted as adults than those convicted as minors. As the law currently stands, a juvenile sex offender’s information is not published and an adult sex offender can petition the Sex Offender Tracking Program to be excluded ...