A confidential student settlement agreement at Monday’s Lehighton Area School District workshop meeting sparked a lengthy debate over how much oversight the nine-member board should have when special education complaints arise.

Board member David Bradley argued that the board needed to be involved the moment a complaint is filed, not after it has made its way to lawyers and a settlement is on the table.

“When the first complaint arises, the board should be involved to understand what that complaint is prior to it going to the Office for Dispute Resolution, prior to it going to lawyers,” Bradley said. “If we have that sit-down negotiation with parents as an entity before they even get a lawyer, the odds are that they’ll be reasonable.”

The board is scheduled to vote on the agreement, which was not made public as part of the workshop agenda, later this month.

Bradley argued the board’s role is oversight and that being informed early could protect both students and the district.

“The board has the authority of looking at that ambiguity and favoring the student rather than fighting, hiring everybody, causing a big fight,” he said. “I think people dig their heels in, and they already made a decision without board oversight, and they then tend to take pride in their position instead of having an objective view from nine individual directors.”

The district’s solicitor, Jeff Sultanik, offered context on why special education settlements are legally complicated and why they don’t always indicate wrongdoing on the district’s part.

“Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act … a district would be liable under a special education matter even if it got 98 percent of the matter correctly,” he said. “If there’s a 2 percent liability, we pay all the attorney’s fees.”

Those dynamics, Sultanik said, shift the calculus.

“These become more a case of evaluating attorney fee liability to the plaintiff’s attorney’s fees than it does always mean as to who was ultimately right or wrong,” he said.

“Are mistakes made in these matters? Sure, mistakes are made in the delivery of education. If we were all perfect, there would be no liability, and candidly, there wouldn’t be any lawyers either.”

District cases

Superintendent Jason Moser told the board he has seen four special education settlements since joining the district in December 2024, noting that one of those involved two or three siblings from the same family. He said he could not speak off the top of his head to the dollar amounts involved, but offered important context on how costs are typically handled.

“The district generally does not pay the actual settlement — that is an insurance-brokered amount,” Moser said. “Compensatory education in most cases is what happens. Are mistakes made from time to time? Absolutely. A lot of times they are procedural and process-based, as opposed to denying a specific service or an appropriate placement for a free and appropriate public education.”

District resident Roy James asked during the comment period how many cases had risen to the level of litigation and what it had cost.

Moser said the dollar amounts were not something he could recite from memory but noted that settlements reflecting relatively low compensatory amounts typically indicate the issue was resolved quickly.

“If you see settlements that are relatively low, oftentimes that indicates it was solved pretty quickly,” he said. “Off the top of my head, I cannot point to and say we have a systemic issue at all right now in terms of providing services.”

Compliance audit

He also disclosed that the district is currently undergoing an IEP compliance audit through an outside organization.

“We are right now in the midst of having that audit from an external organization done so that it’s not just the same eyes looking at those procedures and processes,” Moser said. “That is generally actually the biggest source of mistakes that cause liability — procedural errors. Maybe an IEP wasn’t completed within the time frame required. Maybe it was two days late. That creates liability for the district.”

He added that the district’s default posture is not confrontational.

“We would not tolerate the initial stance of digging in your heels,” he said. “That just is not what we do.”

Board member Joy Beers suggested that rather than examining one settlement in isolation, the board asked administration to analyze the past two years of settlements for patterns.

“Perhaps we could ask the administration to look at the various settlements over the last two years and see if there’s a theme or a common scenario that’s emerging,” Beers said. “Looking at this one settlement, I don’t think that informs us in any way.”

Sandra Michalik, who is in charge of special education for the district, welcomed the suggestion.

“I would be very happy to do that, and I would appreciate the opportunity,” she said. “We learn from all of the settlements that affect us or any type of legal action, but we also learn from case law and what are the trends in Pennsylvania. I arm myself with as much knowledge as I can through law conferences and speaking with attorneys.”

Sultanik echoed Beers’ suggestion and offered a practical mechanism.

“It may not be a bad idea that every time you have a settlement, you get a one-page summary from counsel who handled the matter to show the pros and cons of the settlement, what happened in the particular case, and review that in executive session,” Sultanik said. “If you identify trends, then you can act upon it accordingly.”

Trust administration

Not everyone on the board agreed that Bradley’s vision of earlier board involvement was appropriate. Board member Denise Hartley pushed back, saying she trusts the administration to handle complaints at the staff level before they escalate.

“Not every single time that a parent picks up a phone and calls a superintendent or a teacher would I expect that teacher or that superintendent to then let the school board know what’s going on,” Hartley said. “That is overstepping. If I didn’t trust what the administration was doing, I would put an office in there.”

Board member Jeremy Glaush noted that the district’s settlement statistics compare favorably to others in the region.

“Being on the board for several years, I cannot think of that many settlements we’ve had to make in regards to special education,” Glaush said. “Administration must be doing a good job because we don’t see this that often.”

Bradley held his position, arguing the issue is not about trust but about accountability and timeliness.

“Prior to the settlement is when the board needs to be involved, and prior to the fight, because sometimes it’s as simple as reviewing what’s being requested and then acquiescing to that request,” Bradley said. “The student does not want to wait four months if their IEP is not being satisfied.”