November 26, 2024, Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) issued a letter of finding in which it found itself in noncompliance with Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA). The finding followed a complaint filed against the state agency.

Although the noncompliance isn't earthshattering in nature, the finding is significant for a few reasons.

Noncompliant State Regulations

March 13, 2024, U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) issued the findings of its recent monitoring of Virgina. The differentiated monitoring support (DMS) report USDOE released highlighted Virginia regulations that at the time were inconsistent with IDEA. These included regulations related to filing state complaints and due processes. According to Virginia regulations, and records created by VDOE, complaints and due processes could not be filed against VDOE.

USDOE ordered VDOE to change Virginia regulations—an action that came after parents complained to VDOE and USDOE for years. Leadership at both agencies were aware of the noncompliance, but took years to address it. I emailed USDOE's Matt Schneer myself on August 10, 2022, again asking why his office wasn't addressing this and other inconsistent Virginia regulations. Had changed come sooner, parents could have filed against VDOE for COVID-related complaints. Instead, the one-year timeline for complaints and two-year timeline for due processes flew by before change occurred. Today, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has a complaint opened against VDOE related to its COVID-era actions.

Failure to Correct Noncompliance

In 2020, USDOE released the first in a string of letters and reports in which it found VDOE at fault for state complaint practices that were inconsistent with IDEA.

December 5, 2024, just a few days after VDOE's November 26th letter of finding was released, USDOE closed its monitoring of VDOE. A day later, VDOE issued a press release praising itself for doing what it should have been doing all along: working toward being and/or coming into compliance with IDEA.

However, VDOE didn't include a corrective action plan in the very findings it made against itself.

Subject of the Complaint

The complaint focused on a procedural violation. A complaint was filed against a Virginia LEA. VDOE failed to respond to the complainant within the timeframe required by IDEA. The complainant contacted VDOE to inquire about the delay. VDOE responded that it had issued the response to the LEA, but not to the complainant. In addition to responding within a certain amount of time, there are requirements about parties to complaints receiving the same correspondence from VDOE.

This was not the first time VDOE missed a complaint-related deadline, it was not the first time VDOE failed to include a complainant on communication with an LEA, nor was it the first time VDOE's noncompliance negatively impacted a complainant's one-year state complaint timeline.

The complainant filed a complaint against VDOE.

VDOE's "Correction"

In its analysis of the complaint, VDOE stated:

"The Office of Dispute Resolution acknowledges that Complainant was unintentionally left off the email transmitting the Inquiry letter. To address the matter, as well as additional intermittent email problem we have been experiencing, I have sent the following directive to staff:

"When sending email regarding state complaints, all specialists should check their 'Sent' mail after the initial transmittal to double check that all parties have been copies and that the email has not become 'caught' in the system's outbox."

In the corrective action plan section of its letter of findings, VDOE stated:

"While we have found the SEA to be in noncompliance with regard to this issue, the matter has been self-corrected. No further corrective action is required."

The submission of memos has been VDOE's go-to corrective action plan for years—even though a memo doesn't ensure noncompliance is stopped. It simply puts staff on notice that there's a problem. (Just ask VDOE about how well memos worked in stopping Fairfax County Public School's long-time failures to secure student records. VDOE found FCPS in noncompliance on this issue alone over and over for years. And yet . . . FCPS' noncompliance continued and VDOE's corrective action plans continued to require FCPS to send a memo.)

In VDOE's case, it has a long history of e-mail/mail and timeline issues. Back in 2017, VDOE had "intermittent email problem[s]. State complaint correspondence wasn't making it to complainants in time and/or at all. See: The Mysterious Case of the Virginia Department of Education Mail (Unexplained Missing Notices of Complaint and Much Much More) In the years that followed, if a document wasn't received by a specific date, VDOE would insist it was in the mail. VDOE refused to email documents for years, hence "it's in the mail" became a common thread in VDOE interactions. 

Many of the same individuals handling complaints in 2017 remain involved in 2024. They failed to correct the problem in 2017. During USDOE's 2020-2024 monitoring, they failed to put a system in place to ensure each step in the state complaint process occurs when and how it should. Had VDOE put a system that worked in place back in 2017, it wouldn't have engaged in the noncompliance it engaged in, in 2024.

So, although one might say VDOE took a step forward by finding itself in noncompliance, the reality is its failure to address the actual noncompliance holds it back.