District's IEP Denied as FAPE After Failing to Fully Assess Autistic Student's Executive Function and Sensory Needs

What Happened

Student is a 12-year-old boy with autism (primary eligibility) and ADHD (secondary eligibility) who had been retained in first grade and most recently attended a special day class. Parent withdrew Student from school in January 2016 due to dissatisfaction with his program and began homeschooling him. The parties reached a prior settlement agreement under which Student would be homeschooled through fourth grade while receiving reimbursement for private Lindamood-Bell tutoring, and Sacramento City agreed to conduct triennial assessments in spring 2017 followed by a new IEP.

The district completed assessments in multiple areas — academic, speech and language, psycho-educational, occupational therapy, and a functional behavior assessment — and held a three-part IEP team meeting in April and May 2017. The resulting IEP offered Student placement in a special day class with language emphasis, a one-to-one aide, individual and group speech and language services, occupational therapy consultation, and behavior intervention services. Parent refused consent to the IEP. Because California law requires a district to file for due process when a parent refuses a placement it believes is necessary for FAPE, Sacramento City filed this hearing. The sole issue was whether the May 25, 2017 IEP offered Student a FAPE in the least restrictive environment.

What the ALJ Found

The ALJ ruled in favor of Student, finding the IEP substantively flawed in three critical areas:

1. Failure to Assess Executive Functioning. Every assessor who worked with Student — the special education teacher, the speech pathologist, and the school psychologist — acknowledged executive function deficits, and Parent raised these concerns repeatedly at IEP meetings. Yet no one was actually tasked with conducting a comprehensive executive function assessment. The behavior consultant had never heard the term "executive functioning." Goals addressing executive function were developed by a behavior analyst who had not attended any IEP meeting where assessments were discussed, based partly on outdated 2015 data. The ALJ found this left the IEP team without the reliable information it needed to design appropriate goals or supports.

2. Inadequate Functional Behavior Assessment. The behavior assessment was conducted by a first-time assessor with minimal supervision, over three consecutive days during Student's spring break — a period when Student was understandably upset about being required to do schoolwork. The assessment only tracked two behaviors, did not capture antecedent-behavior-consequence data, and was explicitly limited to the home environment. Even Learning Solutions, the agency that conducted it, acknowledged the assessment would not apply to a classroom setting. Despite this, the IEP team used it as the basis for Student's behavior goals.

3. Insufficient Sensory Processing Assessment. The occupational therapy report identified sensory processing deficits but failed to clearly explain their severity, did not reconcile apparent inconsistencies in parent ratings, and did not explain why identified deficits required no direct services. The occupational therapist was not present at the IEP meeting to answer questions. The IEP offered only one hour per month of occupational therapy consultation with no evidence that amount was sufficient, and proposed only one vague sensory goal despite multiple identified deficit areas.

The ALJ concluded that without accurate present levels of performance in these three areas, it was impossible to develop appropriate goals or determine an appropriate placement. Because the substantive flaws were dispositive, the ALJ did not need to address the many procedural violations Parent had also raised.

What Was Ordered

1. Sacramento City's request to have its May 25, 2017 IEP declared a FAPE was denied.
2. Student (Parent) was declared the prevailing party.

Why This Matters for Parents

1. An IEP is only as good as the assessments underneath it. If the district hasn't thoroughly evaluated your child's executive functioning, sensory processing, or behavior in a school setting, any goals built on that incomplete foundation can be challenged. Ask in writing whether each known area of need was comprehensively assessed using valid and reliable tools.

2. A behavior assessment conducted at home — or during an unusual period like a school break — may not be usable for school-based goals. The law requires assessments to provide information relevant to the child's educational needs. If a functional behavior assessment was not done in or near a school environment, push back on using it to write classroom behavior goals.

3. Identified needs must be assessed, not just mentioned. Multiple assessors in this case noted executive function concerns in passing while assessing other areas. The ALJ made clear that brief observations by assessors focused on other things do not satisfy the legal requirement for a comprehensive, technically sound assessment of each area of need.

4. IEP goals must flow directly from present levels of performance. When a district writes goals without a solid assessment foundation — especially by pulling in old data or having someone who never observed the student write the goals — parents can argue those goals are not legally adequate. Document everything: ask at IEP meetings where each goal's baseline data comes from.