Decoding Dyslexia-AK

Worth the read!

This one deserves a civil rights victory lap.

In special education due process, districts sometimes use a 10-day offer to create pressure.

The basic rule is this: if the district makes a settlement offer more than 10 days before hearing, and the parents reject it, the district may later argue the parents cannot recover attorney fees after that offer unless they “beat the offer” at hearing.

That rule is supposed to encourage fair settlement.

But here is the game.

A district offers the parents some of what they desperately need for their child, but offers a laughably low amount for attorney fees.

That puts the parent in an impossible position:

Take the deal and eat the legal fees or leave your attorney unpaid.

Or keep fighting and let the district argue later that you were unreasonable.

Courts are starting to call this what it is.

In Rawlings v. District of Columbia, the district offered only $6,000 in attorney fees. The parent rejected it and ultimately received fewer services than the district had offered, but the court still awarded $71,545.10 to cover legal fees.

In A.P. and K.P. v. Clover Park School District, the district offered only $5,000 in attorney fees. The parents received slightly fewer service hours than the district had offered, but the court still awarded $167,286.71 to cover legal fees.

That is exactly as it should be.

An offer is not reasonable just because it includes services for the child while quietly trying to starve out the attorney who made that relief possible.

Parents should not be forced to choose between getting help for their child and leaving their attorney holding the bag.

And districts should not be allowed to use lowball fee offers to divide parents from their lawyers, to punish attorneys for taking on IDEA cases, or to make enforcement financially impossible for ordinary families.

If districts want to settle early, they can make real offers.

Not tactical offers that use attorney fees as a weapon.

Because fee shifting exists for a reason: civil rights mean very little if only wealthy families can afford to enforce them.

Rawlings v. District of Columbia, No. 1:24-cv-02122 (D.D.C. May 19, 2025).

A.P. and K.P., Parents of I.P. v. Clover Park School District, No. 25-cv-5200-BJR (W.D. Wash. June 1, 2026).

Interesting.

Why would a parent want teacher performance reviews in a special education case?

Because schools often defend a case by saying: “The instruction was appropriate.”

Parents are allowed to ask: “How do we know?”

If the same teachers providing the child’s instruction were being evaluated, criticized, coached, or assessed during that same time period, those records may help answer whether the instruction was actually appropriate.

A court was recently asked to decide if parents could have access to teacher evaluations from their personnel files and the answer was: Yes.

The court did not give parents every email or the entire personnel file. But it did allow discovery of formal and informal performance assessments for the teachers who instructed the student during the relevant time period.

That matters. Schools control the records. Parents need access when there is a dispute.

J.H. et al. v. Palo Alto Unified School District, No. 5:25-cv-04455 (N.D. Cal. discovery order, March 10, 2026).