Issaquah Schools Must Pay Disabled Teen's Parents $160K: Report

ISSAQUAH, WA — A local family is entitled to receive more than $160,000 from the Issaquah School District after a judge ruled that the district violated federal laws designed to guarantee educational rights to students with disabilities.

The boy, who is now a teenager, has been diagnosed with autism, ADHD, ADD and learning disabilities, and had been struggling in school since the fourth grade, the Seattle Times reported this week. Yet, despite having ongoing meetings with his teachers — both for general education classes and special education instruction — the boy did not receive adequate support from the district, the judge ruled, according to the report.

The newspaper reported that the parents pulled their son from Issaquah Middle School in 2018 when he was about to enter the eighth grade. The parents filed a complaint against the district and enrolled their son in a Mercer Island private school.

The parents are not identifying their son and the district declined to comment on the judge’s decision, citing privacy laws, The Associated Press reported.

Under the judge's order, the district was to reimburse the student’s parents for the private tuition paid so far, an evaluation they had paid for and transportation to and from the private school, according to the report. The district was also ordered to cover any of the student’s future tuition costs at the private school, which the judge determined he will continue attending until the district can provide free appropriate public education for the student.

The judge’s final ruling determined that the district failed to keep accurate reports or to provide the boy’s parents with proper documentation and it also failed the family in other areas, the Seattle Times reported. By doing so, the district violated with Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, the judge ruled.

“Based on nearly 13 years’ experience conducting due process hearings under the IDEA, it is frankly inconceivable to the undersigned (judge) how the District failed to recognize there was something so seriously wrong with the Student during (sixth grade) that he needed to be reevaluated to find out what was happening,” Judge Matthew D. Wacker wrote in the order, according to the newspaper’s report.