By Diane Willcutts, Education Advocate

State complaints are often a useful and free or low-cost way for families to resolve concerns regarding a district violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in the past year. In a related article, Your Guide to State Complaints, education advocate Diane Willcutts explains the benefits of state complaints and why it’s worth considering for handling disputes with your child’s school. Here, Willcutts provides guidelines to help increase the odds of getting a favorable response from your state complaint.

1. Read your state’s special education regulations and guidance related to your issue. (This information can be found online.) State law may provide more rights to the child with an IEP beyond what is in the federal IDEA. For example, many parents file state complaints related to independent educational evaluations (IEEs). IDEA requires districts to respond to a parent request for an IEE by either agreeing to pay for the IEE or by filing for a due process hearing “without unnecessary delay.”  However, many districts refuse the request for the IEE but then do not file for a hearing.  (“Just say no” is not a legal option with IEEs.)  Although the federal IDEA does not provide an exact definition of what constitutes “unnecessary delay,” some states say districts have 5 days or 10 days or some other amount of time to respond.   Other states are silent on this issue.

2. If you want to do “advanced” homework, research the state complaint decisions on your issue. States are required to make the complaint decisions accessible to the public. A few states post the decisions online, although most do not. If the decisions aren’t online, you can obtain state complaints and decisions by sending a written Freedom of Information Act request to your state department of education.  

3. When you write your complaint, quote from the law, from federal/state guidance, and from previous state complaint decisions, if you have these, in order to support your assertion of legal violations. Overall, write the complaint in a clear-cut way so that the state complaint investigator can cut and paste what you wrote into their decision.

4. As a matter of routine (and before the state complaint is filed), always document important conversations in writing—e.g., when you make requests that are refused or approved, or when the district staff make outrageous statements in IEP meetings or on the phone or in the hallway.  (“If it’s not in writing, it never happened!”) You should quote from and provide the state with these emails as support for your complaint.  

5. When you describe the facts supporting your complaint, stick with those that are the most concerning. For example, being denied reading instruction “because high school students can use reading pens” is critically important. On the other hand, a teacher that takes 24 hours to respond to email may be annoying, but it’s not germane to your child’s education.

6. For as many facts as possible, reference and provide documentation. If you say, “our family requested the independent educational evaluation on November 8, 2022,” attach a copy of the email, letter, or IEP documenting the request to the complaint. That makes it extremely easy for the investigator to write their complaint decision.

7. Once you file your state complaint, send an email to the state investigator requesting that they email you the district’s response to your complaint as soon as it is received. Most people don’t know to do this, but it’s critical. That way, if the board attorney writes a persuasive (yet possibly off-the-wall) response, you have an opportunity to follow up with your own persuasive analysis to the person investigating the complaint.  

8. Sometimes it may be necessary to file a state complaint against the state department of education. And yes, the complaint goes to the state department of education, but you can request (in writing!) an impartial investigator who is not a state employee. The state may or may not grant this, but it helps to ask.

9. For more information about state complaints, check out the IDEA State Complaint Resource Center. This is an invaluable resource with everything you’d want to know about state complaints, including sample complaints and complaint decisions.

Diane Willcutts is an Education Advocate with Education Advocacy, LLC, an organization that works with families of children with disabilities throughout Connecticut.

Related Smart Kids Topics

• Your Guide to State Complaints
• Your Child’s Rights: 6 Principles of the IDEA
• Resolving Special Ed Disputes
• Handling IEP Disagreements