| legally
actionable violation can be difficult to determine. In this case,
that determination is exacerbated
by the passage of time in a setting where there exists a yearly cycle
of events regarding budgets, plans,
applications and an ever-changing population of
individuals to be educated, who, for the most part, move on to a new
school level each September. The
application process for the 2000-2001 school year, which is the
subject of much of the detailed evidential analysis presented by the
petitioners in their briefs is,
now, in March/April 2001, considerably dated, at least as to the districts'
plans and applications for the approaching
2001-2002 school term. Thus, to a large degree,
while the evidential details of what occurred last year are important
as examples of what purportedly
was wrong (or right) with the efforts of districts and, more pointedly
here, the Department, it is the
overarching systemic concerns raised by the petitioners that are
most amenable to current treatment. In part, this is due to the fact
that some of the DOE responses to
the Court's mandates were not in effect at the time the January 2000
applications were issued, nor were
they in effect, or even in existence, in the weeks and
months immediately post-Abbott VI . As the case is judged today,
regulations are in effect, the Expectations document
is published, and a series of post-Abbott VI training
and guidance events have occurred.
Whether any of these have sufficiently performed
the tasks for which they are meant and whether, even if valuable,
such matters have allowed the Department
to sufficiently respond to the Court's mandates so as to defeat
the claims of the petitioners, is a primary aspect of the decisions
herein. The ELC agrees that any
relief that might be found appropriate in regards to its systemic
complaints
must be prospective in nature.17 To
the extent that the evidence presented establishes
that the DOE has not done what the Court |
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