Special Education Action's mission is to ensure parents, educators, and students have the information and tools necessary to fully understand, address, and safeguard the unique needs of all students who require special education.
Recent Articles
How to Submit a FERPA Request
What Is An Education Record?
An education record simply isn’t a file consisting of report cards and progress reports. It includes such records as emails and legal invoices, too.
(7.8.22 Update) Fairfax County School Board Heads to Court Over FOIA Request; Delays Publishing of Office of Civil Rights Investigation Records
June 10, 2022, article updated to include new information, to include information about retaliation and the scheduled hearing date.
June 2, 2022: Article first published.
Fairfax County School Board is headed to court over a Freedom of Information Act request.
This is the second time in nine months that FCSB’s FOIA-response-related actions (and inactions) have resulted in SpecialEducationAction.com being prevented from publishing internal Fairfax County Public Schools documents. In addition, FOIA’d documents related to the first case apply to the case at hand.
In the case at hand, the FOIA’d records relate to the United States Department of Education Office of Civil Rights’ investigation into Fairfax County Public Schools, which it announced January 12, 2021, along with its intention to investigate Los Angeles Unified School District and Seattle Public Schools.
Fairfax County Pay-to-Play Education Continues to Generate Revenue for County; Fails to Address Discrimination
A year and a half after OCR announced the investigation, FCPS’s current actions paint a portrait of a school district aggressive in its efforts to collect education-access fees from general education students, but lackadaisical in its efforts to address the needs of students whose IEPs weren’t implemented in full during its 2019-20 COVID closures.
(June 13, 2022, Update) Due Process Case 22-84, Chesterfield County Public Schools, Virginia: Subpoenas, Motions, Transcripts, and More
Thank you to two Chesterfield County, Virginia, parents for sharing their due process experiences and associated documents.
You’ll find the hearing transcripts at the end of this article. In the coming weeks, subpoenas, motions, and other documents will be added, providing readers an example of how due process hearings play out record by record.
(6.9.22 Update) Fairfax County Public Schools Levies Service Fee for Service it Doesn’t Provide, Fails to Follow and Update Its Own Pricing Guidelines
Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) is at fault for the following issues:
1) levying a service fee for a service it doesn’t provide;
2) failing to follow its own pricing guidelines;
3) failing to update its pricing guidelines and failing to have a system in place to identify needed updates;
4) failing to have a system in place to catch fee charging and collection issues;
5) failing to train staff to understand fee charging and collection issues, and to think creatively and critically to identify and/or suggest solutions for such issues; and
6) making the already expensive post-high school graduation planning process more expensive for families and students.