Complaint Summary

Date Findings Report Sent

August 13, 2026

Case Number

26-0778

School District

Wolcott Public Schools

Person filing complaint

Parent

Grade Level

Elementary School

Allegation(s)

Issue 1: The Parent alleges the District did not conduct an initial evaluation that included procedures to determine if the Student is a child with a disability under IDEA and determine the educational needs of the Student. (34 CFR §§ 300.301, 300.304 and 300.8 and RCSA § 10-76d-9)

Conclusion(s)

State and federal special education requirements mandate that a district assess a student in all areas related to the suspected disability, while ensuring that the evaluation is sufficiently comprehensive to identify all of the student's special education and related service needs whether or not the needs are commonly linked to the disability category in which the student may be classified.

It is concluded that, knowing the Student had been diagnosed as having an attention disorder and considering the Student's Parents' concern regarding the Student's reading, the PPT recommended a comprehensive initial evaluation that used a variety of assessment tools to measure the Student's cognitive and academic achievement level, communication, and behavior (including attention). The CELF-5, is used to identify language disorders, and measures how well a student understands and uses language across four major areas: word meaning, word forms, sentence structure, and social communication. The PPVT-5, measures listening and understanding of single-word vocabulary. The EVT-3 measures the depth and accessibility of expressive single-word vocabulary. The TOWL-4 is a comprehensive, norm-referenced assessment designed to evaluate students' writing skills. CTOPPS-2 is a widely used clinical and educational tool for evaluating phonological processing skills essential for reading development. It provides composite scores and detailed subtest results to identify strengths, weaknesses, and risk for reading disorders. The WISC-V measures cognitive abilities and the Connors-4 measures attention, executive functioning and hyperactivity.

The PPT's determination that, based on the evaluation findings, the Student was not a student in need of special education services under the IDEA is supported by the evaluation. If the Student continues to perform below grade level, general education tiered interventions should be intensified. No violation of the IDEA is found and no corrective action is required.

Corrective Action(s)

None