Appeals Decisions

To meet the federal requirement of making appeals panel decisions available to the public, ODR posts all of the decisions of the Special Education Appeals Panels.  School district names are included, but the name of the child is reduced to initials.  Use the search form below to locate and download appeals panel decisions in PDF format.

In addition to the online search below, ODR has provided copies of two new tools to aid in your search for appeals:

• Appeal Index by Number (Pdf format 141k) - Updated 1/8/09
• Appeal Index by Category (Pdf format 622k) - Updated 10/16/08
• Gifted Open Appeals

The indices could prove to be most useful when printed and kept as a reference document.  When you find a particular number or category you need, please use the online search tool provided below to obtain the copy(ies) of the Appeal(s).

When searching for an appeal by number, please use four digits, eg., "0881" for Appeal Opinion No. 881.

ODR endeavors to ensure that the appeals panel decisions listed here have not been subsequently overrules by a court.  However, a decision might still be listed that has been changed by a court without ODR's knowledge and therefore the decision should not be followed.  A librarian at the local law library may be able to help, or an attorney can be consulted.

Parties to judicial litigation that results in changes to the appeal decisions are encouraged to notify ODR of the results, so that the appeals decision database remains as accurate as possible.