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Hearing Letter 24: The Exhibit Index for the Ordinary Case

When to Use It

This form turns your binder into numbered exhibits, P-1 forward, so the documents you gathered arrive at the hearing in a form the hearing officer can actually use, and so you can prove you disclosed each one on time. Fill it in once your proof is assembled, and finish the disclosed-date column as you serve.

The clock that governs it is the federal five-business-day rule. In the ordinary impartial hearing each party must disclose to the other all evaluations completed and recommendations based on them, and all evidence it intends to use, at least five business days before the hearing (34 C.F.R. § 300.512(a)(3), (b)(1)). The hearing officer may bar any evaluation or evidence not disclosed by that date unless the other side consents (34 C.F.R. § 300.512(a)(3), (b)(2)). That is why this index carries a disclosed-date column the discipline version does not: the date you served an exhibit is what protects it from exclusion. Remember who carries the case. In New York the district bears the burden of proof (N.Y. Educ. Law § 4404(1)(c)), so many of your exhibits are there to test the district's proof rather than to carry your own, and the index should say which.

Use it with: H-Tool 56 (the exhibit set and the five-business-day disclosure).