Board of Education of the City School District of The City of New York
- Valerie Caproni
- 1:23-cv-08883
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 6
In Board of Education v. Y.F., Judge Willis denied discovery requests but granted the parties’ request to reopen and extend discovery.
Y.F. and his parents did not obtain the requested order compelling the Board to produce the records or provide a Rule 30(b)(6) witness. The parties were permitted to reopen and extend discovery, and they were required to submit an amended case-management plan.
What happened
In Board of Education of the City School District of the City of New York v. Y.F., Y.F. and his parents asked the court to require the Board to produce records showing hourly rates paid for services provided to autistic students during three school years. The records related to a dispute over payments for Y.F.’s schooling at Reach for the Stars.
The Board argued that the requested records were not relevant and would be difficult and costly to compile. The court found that the rates could be relevant, but also found that the records were publicly available and that the defendants could compile the information themselves. The court therefore denied the request to compel production of the records and denied the related request for a witness with knowledge of the uncompiled data.
The court granted the parties’ request to reopen and extend discovery and ordered them to submit an amended case-management plan by February 7, 2025. Judge Jennifer E. Willis issued the order.
The detailed version
- Board of Education of the City School District of The City of New York · No. 1:23-cv-08883
- Valerie Caproni
- Jan. 31, 2025
Background
The Board of Education of the City School District of the City of New York sought judicial review of a June 8, 2023 decision by a New York State Review Officer. That decision ordered the Board to reimburse the defendants $80,000 and pay $262,587.50 directly to Reach for the Stars for the 2021–2022 school year. The opinion states that, after the Board failed to provide Y.F. with a free appropriate public education, Y.F. attended Reach for the Stars.
The defendants moved to compel the Board to produce settlements, resolution agreements, impartial hearing officer decisions, and State Review Officer decisions concerning hourly rates for applied behavior analysis, Board Certified Behavior Analyst, autism, or one-to-one services for children with autism during the 2020–2021, 2021–2022, and 2022–2023 school years. They also sought a deposition witness designated under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6) who would know the contents of the requested documents and data. The parties also requested that discovery be reopened or extended.
Motion to Compel Documents
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26, discovery generally includes nonprivileged information relevant to a claim or defense and proportionate to the needs of the case. The Board argued that decisions involving other students were too case-specific to show whether Reach for the Stars’ rates for Y.F. were reasonable. The defendants argued that the Board’s payments to other providers and schools for similar services were relevant to the reasonableness of the rates at issue.
The court agreed that rates paid for services for other students with autism were relevant because they could make the reasonableness of Reach for the Stars’ rates more or less probable. The court nevertheless denied the motion to compel. The Board did not maintain a searchable database of the relevant decisions and stated that it would have to review, redact, and produce thousands of decisions manually. The court also noted that the requested decisions were publicly available through state databases, although the opinion states that the impartial hearing officer database was incomplete. Because the defendants could access and compile the publicly available information themselves, the court concluded that they could not force the Board to compile and produce it.
Rule 30(b)(6) Witness
The court also denied the request to compel a Rule 30(b)(6) witness. Because the Board was not required to compile and produce the requested data, the court concluded that the Board could not prepare a witness with sufficient knowledge of that uncompiled data.
Discovery Extension and Disposition
The court granted the parties’ request to reopen and extend discovery. It ordered the parties to submit an amended case-management plan by February 7, 2025. The Clerk of Court was asked to close Docket Nos. 29 and 39. The order did not decide the underlying dispute over the payments awarded for Y.F.’s schooling.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.