Stay-Put Provision

School Action

The program that students attended at the time that disputes arose is usually considered to be their then-current placement. One court described this concept [Page 793]as the operative placement actually functioning at the time the dispute first arose (Thomas v. Cincinnati Board of Education, 1990). According to this definition, a proposed placement that had never been implemented would not qualify as the stay-put placement. Thus, the stay-put placement generally is the placement that was last agreed upon by the parents and school board. If parents later withdraw their consent for a placement, it still remains the then-current placement (Clyde K. v. Puyallup School District, 1994).

On occasion, school personnel may make a placement that is meant to be temporary. When this is done, school officials are required to make their intentions clear. If school officials fail to make their intentions clear, then courts consider these placements to be the then-current placements. For example, in an early case, the staff at the private facility that a child attended called for his transfer to a residential school. The school board agreed to the new placement, but a year later notified the student's parents that inasmuch as school personnel saw no need for continued residential placement, the board would no longer assume financial responsibility for the placement. However, the trial court decided that the residential school was the student's then-current placement because board officials had assumed financial responsibility for it and gave no indication at the time that they intended to do so for one year only (Jacobsen v. District of Columbia Board of Education, 1983).

In a subsequent dispute, the same court determined that any limitation on a placement must be spelled out clearly and described in a settlement agreement (Saleh v. District of Columbia, 1987). In this case, the student was placed in a private school pending resolution of a placement dispute by mutual consent of the school board and parents. The board later claimed that the private school was an interim placement only. The court did not agree, ruling that it was the then-current placement, because its interim status had not been conveyed clearly. On the other hand, the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed that a private school placement ceased to be the then-current placement at the end of the school year, because a hearing officer's order clearly stated that it was to be for one year only (Leonard v. McKenzie, 1989). For similar reasons, the First Circuit wrote that a settlement agreement between the parties calling for a temporary placement in a private school did not make it the child's stay-put placement (Verhoeven v. Brunswick School Committee, 1999).

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