RG vs. School District of Philadelphia

I. BACKGROUND

Student is a xx and a half year old male resident of Philadelphia who is currently attending grade 3 of the [Private School], a private school for children with learning differences. The student has a lengthy history of a non-verbal learning disability, an attention deficit disorder, inattentive type, impaired non-verbal memory, deficits in communications and in social skills, concrete thinking, and difficulty with comprehension, abstraction, dysgraphia, executive functioning difficulties, and a significant emotional overlay which affects his behaviors. He had an Individual Educational Plan for Early intervention. He is currently receiving psychiatric treatment at parents’ expense for depression and for low self-esteem.

The student has never attended a public school. The Philadelphia School District offered the parents an Individual Educational Program (IEP) in November, 2006 with subsequent revisions at a public school four blocks from the student’s home. The parents do not believe that this IEP provides a free, appropriate public education for their son. The parents assert that the student is making meaningful progress in his current, private school placement, a school for students with reading disabilities, and they are requesting tuition for this private school placement and reimbursement for expenses for related services.

The Philadelphia School District asserts that the student, a third grade student at the time of the initiation of this due process procedure, never attended a public school, and it was never the intention of the parents to allow placement at the neighborhood public school, just four city blocks from the student’s home. Instead, the School District asserts that the intention of the parents is to gain public school funding for the private school placement and related educational services.