Moonsammy v. Banks

Background

Cindy and Kemraj Moonsammy sued the New York City Department of Education and Chancellor David C. Banks under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), seeking review of a state review officer’s decisions concerning their daughter, A.M. A.M. has cerebral palsy, severe visual impairment, and Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, and the opinion states that she is non-ambulatory, non-verbal, and requires one-to-one assistance for classroom activities and basic needs.

After rejecting the Department’s proposed educational placement, the Moonsammys enrolled A.M. at the private International Institute for the Brain, or iBrain. They sought funding for tuition, transportation, an independent educational evaluation, and one-to-one nursing services. In an earlier decision, the Court granted the Moonsammys summary judgment on the independent-evaluation claim and remanded the direct-payment and nursing-services issues to the state review officer for further factual development.

On remand, State Review Officer Justyn P. Bates awarded the Moonsammys payment for tuition and certain transportation costs but denied additional funding for one-to-one nursing services. He found no reliable evidence that the Moonsammys had agreed to pay separately for those services. The Moonsammys then challenged that denial, and the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment.

Legal standard

The IDEA requires a public school system to provide a free appropriate public education to children with disabilities. When parents place a child in private school, the Burlington-Carter framework determines whether public funding may be awarded. The framework considers whether the public school’s proposed program was inadequate, whether the private placement was appropriate, and whether the equities support reimbursement.

This dispute concerned the third factor: the appropriate amount of reimbursement based on the equities. The statute authorizes reimbursement for the cost of private-school enrollment, and the Court explained that this generally presupposes that the parents incurred, or became obligated to pay, those costs. The Court reviewed the administrative record independently and based its decision on the greater weight of the evidence.

Court’s reasoning

The Court agreed with the state review officer that the record did not establish that the Moonsammys incurred costs for individual nursing services. A.M.’s enrollment agreement with iBrain expressly stated that iBrain would not provide individual nursing services and did not list those services among the separately described related services. The agreement also did not identify a separate charge for such services.

The record likewise did not identify a nurse or outside agency that provided the services, show an agreement with a provider, establish the services’ frequency or duration, or describe payment terms. A representative of iBrain testified that the school did not employ nurses capable of providing one-to-one services, but could not identify any outside provider that had supplied such services to A.M. The Moonsammys also did not identify an oral agreement requiring them to pay.

The Moonsammys relied on brief references to nursing services in A.M.’s educational plan. The Court found those references too unclear to show that the parents had agreed to pay a separate fee, or to establish what services were provided, by whom, or at what cost. The Court also noted that the lack of documentation raised concerns about unsupported or inflated reimbursement requests.

Disposition

The Court granted summary judgment to the Department. It held that the evidence did not support additional reimbursement for individual nursing services. The Court stated that it did not need to rely on the state review officer’s separate procedural conclusion that the Moonsammys had failed to separately identify the nursing-services issue in their administrative appeal.