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Hearing Tool 67: Tuition reimbursement: the three-part case, and the burden that flips

THE RULE

If the district did not make a free appropriate public education available in a timely way before the parent enrolled the child in a private school, a court or hearing officer may require the district to reimburse the parent for the cost of that private placement (34 C.F.R. § 300.148(c); 20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(10)(C)(ii)). The claim runs on a three-part framework built from three Supreme Court cases. First, the district's program was not a free appropriate public education (Burlington School Committee v. Department of Education, 471 U.S. 359 (1985)). Second, the parent's private placement was appropriate for the child, and it need not be a state-approved school or itself provide a perfect program to qualify (Florence County School District Four v. Carter, 510 U.S. 7 (1993)). Third, the equities favor reimbursement, and reimbursement is available even where the child never received special education from the district before the private enrollment (Forest Grove School District v. T.A., 557 U.S. 230 (2009)).

Two rules can cut the money, and both live in the equities. Reimbursement may be reduced or denied if, at the most recent IEP meeting before removing the child, the parent did not tell the team they were rejecting the district's placement and stating their concerns, or did not give the district written notice at least 10 business days before removing the child (34 C.F.R. § 300.148(d)(1)). There are exceptions that protect the parent, including where the school prevented the notice, where the parent had not received the procedural safeguards notice, or where compliance would likely have caused physical or serious emotional harm to the child (34 C.F.R. § 300.148(e)). This is the 10-business-day notice, and H-Letter 18 is the letter that gives it.

Now the flip. In New York the district carries the burden of proof in the hearing, but the statute places the burden of persuasion and production on the parent as to the appropriateness of the unilateral placement (N.Y. Educ. Law § 4404(1)(c)). The statute does not expressly allocate a separate burden on equitable considerations. Accepted-open caveat, July 25, 2026: How that burden is allocated and applied is case-specific and should be checked against current authority for the particular record. The parent should build the equities record because the remedy is discretionary and the notice, evaluation, cooperation, and reasonableness rules can reduce or defeat the award (34 C.F.R. § 300.148(d), (e); Application of a Student with a Disability, Appeal No. 25-178, official decision checked July 25, 2026).

WHY IT MATTERS

This is the highest-value and highest-risk unit in the volume, and both the value and the risk are concentrated in things a parent can get wrong before the hearing even starts.

The risk that arrives earliest is the 10-business-day notice. Missing the notice may cause reimbursement to be reduced or denied on equitable grounds, subject to the mandatory and discretionary exceptions in 34 C.F.R. § 300.148(e). Timely notice removes one potential equitable objection; it does not preserve or guarantee reimbursement, and the parent still must prove the private placement was appropriate. H-Letter 18 supplies the written-notice route described in § 300.148(d)(1)(ii).

The risk that decides the case is the flipped burden. A parent who assumes the district carries everything can prepare to attack the district's program and bring nothing affirmative on the private school, and then lose on the one prong that was always theirs: whether the placement they chose was appropriate for their child (N.Y. Educ. Law § 4404(1)(c)). You have to prove the private placement meets the child's needs, with the same kind of evidence you would use to prove any placement appropriate, the child's needs, the program's response to them, and the progress it produced. That proof is your job, no matter who filed.

The value is the reason it is worth the risk: a full year of private tuition, sometimes more, is the largest single sum a hearing can order, which is exactly why the district defends it hardest and why the equities and the notice get litigated.