District Loses: Failed to Provide Assessment Plans and Reports in Romanian

What Happened

Student is a child with Down syndrome who had been found eligible for special education under the category of intellectual disability with a secondary speech and language impairment. After a period abroad, Student returned to Buena Park School District in September 2013. The district conducted a comprehensive multidisciplinary assessment and later an occupational therapy assessment. Parent attended IEP meetings where these assessments were presented — but the assessment plans, assessment reports, and other key documents were provided only in English, even though the district knew the family's native language was Romanian. No interpreter was provided at several of the most critical IEP meetings.

Parent disagreed with the district's assessments and refused to consent to further reassessments. Parent also requested a change in placement from a special day class to a full inclusion program. The district filed for due process, asking the ALJ to declare its assessments appropriate and to grant it the right to reassess Student without parental consent. Parent countered that the district's failure to communicate in Romanian undermined the entire assessment process and their ability to meaningfully participate.

What the ALJ Found

The ALJ found that while the district's assessments were technically sound — conducted by qualified professionals using appropriate tools administered without racial or cultural discrimination — the district failed on a critical procedural level. The law requires that written notices, including assessment plans, be provided to parents in their native language unless it is clearly not feasible to do so. The district never provided any assessment plan in Romanian, and offered no evidence that doing so would have been infeasible.

The problems didn't stop at the assessment plans. The 27-page multidisciplinary assessment report was sent home in English the afternoon before a 7:30 a.m. IEP meeting — giving Parent no meaningful opportunity to read or understand it before the meeting. The occupational therapy report, filled with highly specialized medical and technical language, was handed to Parent at the IEP meeting itself, also in English and with no interpreter present. California law is clear that districts must take any action necessary to ensure parents understand IEP proceedings, including providing interpreters when a parent's native language is not English. The district failed to do this at the October 2013, December 2013, and March 2014 meetings.

The ALJ found it telling that at meetings without interpreters, IEP notes recorded little or no parent questions — but at the November 2014 meeting where an interpreter was provided, the notes described extensive parent questions and disagreement with the assessments. The district's witnesses speculated that Parent understood enough English, but the ALJ found Mother's testimony — corroborated by her letters and the IEP notes — more credible than that speculation. Because the district could not prove the assessments were properly presented in a way parents could understand, the assessments were deemed inappropriate as a whole, and the district's request to reassess Student without parental consent was also denied.

What Was Ordered

1. All of the district's requests for relief were denied.
2. Student was declared the prevailing party on all issues.

Why This Matters for Parents

1. Your right to receive documents in your native language is legally protected. Under both federal and California law, districts must provide assessment plans, assessment reports, and notices in the parent's native language — not just in English. If your primary language is not English, you can insist that these documents be translated before you are asked to sign anything.

2. Getting a report the night before a meeting is not enough. The law requires that parents have a genuine opportunity to review and understand assessment reports before IEP meetings. If you receive a lengthy, technical report right before a meeting and cannot meaningfully engage with it, that is a procedural violation you can raise.

3. You have the right to an interpreter at every IEP meeting. Districts are legally required to arrange for an interpreter if your native language is not English. You do not need to repeatedly re-request this accommodation after the district has already been put on notice. If the district fails to provide an interpreter, document it in writing every time.

4. A technically good assessment can still be found inadequate. This case shows that even well-conducted testing by qualified professionals can fail to meet legal standards if the district doesn't properly communicate the results to parents in a way they can understand. The assessment process includes how results are shared and discussed — not just how the tests are administered.