LA Wildfires, School Closures, And Ensuring FAPE Compliance

01.17.2025

As Los Angeles County faces unprecedented wildfires (“LA wildfires”) resulting in the displacement of thousands of families due to loss of and damage to their homes and school districts’ loss of schools and damage to buildings, impacted LA county schools are triaging how to provide programming to their disabled students supported with individualized education programs (“IEP”) or plans authorized by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 [1] (“Section 504”).

While the scale of the LA wildfires is unprecedented, large scale school closures are not. Districts can use the learned lessons from the 2020 COVID-19 school closures to navigate defensible legal next steps for districts that have lost entire schools and/or must close fire-damaged schools due to health and safety reasons. The destruction from the fire may make it impossible to implement IEPs that destroyed or damaged school sites as a student’s educational placement. This alert serves as a general overview as to the most viable legal options and potential secondary legal obstacles with the understanding that individual districts may be facing unique circumstances and needs depending on how impacted their schools, teachers, administrators, staff, and students are from the fires.

Like the beginning of the COVID closures 2020, school districts that have closed due to the fires as to all general and special education students can do so for 10 schooldays without incurring compensatory education liability. Legal and practical obstacles occur beginning on the 11^th school day when IEP programming must resume.

As in the past, the most legally defensible action is to bring all students back to in-person schooling as quickly as possible. If your district can relocate students and special education programs to an alternative district school site by the 11^th day, this path limits exposure to claims of failure to implement IEPs, denials of free appropriate public education (“FAPE”), and requests for compensatory education services. Some additional assistance in this regard may be found in the Governor’s January 14, 2025, Executive Order N-6-25, viewable here: https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2025-1-14.LA-Fires-K-12-and-Child-Care-EO.FINAL_.pdf.

As for the recommended method of transmitting information to families of special education students of a district’s immediate and longer-term plan for educating children impacted by the LA wildfires, districts should utilize the format of a prior written notice found in Title 34 Code of Federal Regulations § 300.503. The prior written notice can be used for a variety of placement related scenarios, including informing parents of impacted special education students that the location of their child’s IEP program is being changed to a different school site if the otherwise stay-put schoolsite is destroyed or too damaged to permit in-person attendance.

If your school district needs more time for the logistics of moving special education classrooms and programs to open school sites, the option with more exposure is implementation of each student’s IEP Emergency Conditions Plan on the 11^th school day and forward. (Educ. Code Section 56345(a)(9)) In most cases, the special education program and services would be implemented virtually or possibly via a hybrid model if partial in-person attendance is achievable using portable structures.

Please contact your AALRR attorney to discuss your district’s specific circumstances and needs for assistance in developing prior written notices to inform parents of either the change in location (school site) or the implementation of the IEP’s Emergency Conditions Plan if the fires have destroyed and/or damaged school sites rendering continued in-person student attendance impossible.

Additionally, we anticipate the displacement caused by the LA wildfires may trigger additional legal issues to process such as:

Unilateral changes in placement for special education programs having to be moved to a different school site than identified in a student’s IEP;
McKinney Vento;
Families residing longer term outside of district boundaries;
Transportation;
Requests for change of placement to independent study programs;
Operative settlement agreements conditioned on residing within district geographic boundaries; and
Parent refusals to send their student back to school.

Your AALRR attorney can support you in navigating these anticipated legal issues along with tailored guidance for serving your special education population with impacted resources. For a further discussion on this topic please join us at SpedTalk: “LA Wildfires, School Closures, and Ensuring FAPE Compliance” scheduled for Wednesday January 22^nd at 10:00 am. Register here.

[1] This Alert focuses primarily but not exclusively on student served by IEPs.