Hawaii

The published process

Placement during a dispute

Under the notice’s own heading on this question, "once a due process complaint is sent to the other party, during the resolution process time period, and while waiting for the decision of any impartial due process hearing or court proceeding, unless you and the Department agree otherwise, your child must remain in his/her current educational placement." — Procedural Safeguards Notice, The Student’s Placement While the Due Process Complaint and Hearing are Pending, retrieved Aug 25, 2026.

Independent evaluation at public expense

"You have the right to an IEE of your child at public expense if you disagree with an evaluation of your child obtained by the Department". If requested, the Department must "without unnecessary delay, either: (a) File a due process complaint to request a hearing to show that its evaluation of your child is appropriate; or (b) Provide an IEE at public expense," "unless the Department demonstrates in a hearing that the evaluation of your child that you obtained did not meet the Department’s criteria." "You are entitled to only one IEE of your child at public expense each time the Department conducts an evaluation of your child with which you disagree."

Who may be present, and what record is made

Any party to a due process hearing has the right to "Be accompanied and advised by an attorney and/or persons with special knowledge or training regarding the problems of students with disabilities" and to "Obtain a written, or, at your option, electronic, word-for-word record of the hearing". Parents must be given the right to "Have your child present at the hearing", to "Open the hearing to the public", and to "Have the record of the hearing, the findings of fact, and the decisions provided to you at no cost." Recording of IEP meetings, as distinct from due process hearings, is not stated in the sources reviewed.

The three rows above answer the questions an experienced adviser raises first, from the state’s own published documents, or record that a question is not answered in them.

Timelines, as stated in the sources

All quoted; none calculated. From the Procedural Safeguards Notice except where noted.

On mediation. No specific numeric timeline is stated for scheduling or completing mediation; the notice states only that "Each meeting in the mediation process must be scheduled in a timely manner and held at a place that is convenient for you and the Department."

On the state written complaint. To file, "not more than one year prior to the date that the complaint is received". To reach a written decision, "a time limit of 60 calendar days after a complaint is filed", extendable only for "exceptional circumstances" or by mutual agreement to pursue mediation.

On requesting a due process hearing. "not more than two (2) years" from when the parent or the Department knew or should have known of the issue. Separately, the notice states "there is a 180-day statute of limitations in claiming reimbursements for unilateral placements, including special education and related services, in private schools." The same passage then states that "a hearing for special education and/or related services must be requested within 80 days of enrollment in the private school or facility. The 180-day enrollment timeline begins on the student’s first day of attendance." Both figures — 180 days and 80 days — appear in the notice’s own text for what reads as the same deadline; quoted here exactly as published, not reconciled.

On the resolution meeting and period. "Within 15 calendar days of receiving notice of your due process complaint, and before the due process hearing begins, the Department must convene a meeting" with the parent and relevant IEP Team members. "If the Department has not resolved the due process complaint to your satisfaction within 30 calendar days of the receipt of the due process complaint (during the time period for the resolution process), the due process hearing may occur."

On the hearing decision. "The 45-calendar day timeline for issuing a final due process hearing decision, as described under the heading Hearing Decisions, begins at the expiration of the 30-calendar day resolution period". A hearing officer "may grant specific extensions of time beyond the 45-calendar day time period" at the request of either party, each for no more than 45 days.

On appeal. "The party (you or the Department) bringing the action shall have 30 calendar days from the date of the decision of the hearing officer to file a civil action."

On discipline and expedited hearings. "The Department must arrange for an expedited due process hearing, which must occur within 20 school days of the date the hearing request is filed and must result in a determination within 10 school days after the hearing." Unless waived or mediation is used instead, "a resolution meeting must occur within seven (7) calendar days of receiving notice of the due process complaint. The hearing may proceed unless the matter has been resolved to the satisfaction of both parties within 15 calendar days of receipt of the due process complaint." A hearing officer may order an interim alternative placement "for not more than 45 school days" where maintaining the current placement is "substantially likely to result in injury to your child or to others."

What any of this means for a particular situation is for the agency and its processes to determine.

Change log

Aug 25, 2026 · Page created (pilot). Captured first-party: Hawaii’s Procedural Safeguards Notice (May 2022, the anchor source), text-extracted directly from the published PDF; and the Dispute Resolution overview page, hand-transcribed. Findings recorded rather than smoothed: (1) the notice’s own text states two different figures — 180 days and 80 days — in the same passage on the deadline for claiming reimbursement for a unilateral private-school placement, quoted verbatim rather than reconciled; (2) no numeric timeline is stated for scheduling or completing mediation, only that meetings be scheduled "in a timely manner"; (3) no parent training and information center is named for Hawaii in either source; the notice references the category generically; (4) two email addresses on the Dispute Resolution page (Complaints Management Program and Office of Dispute Resolution) are Cloudflare-obfuscated in the rendered page with no plaintext recovered, and are not reproduced on this page; the Complaints Management Program’s email was instead recovered in plaintext from the Procedural Safeguards Notice PDF itself (specialedcomplaints@k12.hi.us) and is used here; (5) due process hearing requests may be routed to any of three separate recipients (Complex Area Superintendent, Complaints Management Program, or Office of Dispute Resolution), a three-way routing option not seen in other states captured so far; (6) the notice’s numbered list items in the Mediation and Hearing Rights sections are quoted with their original sentence-initial capitalization (Is voluntary, Be accompanied, Obtain a written, Have your child present, Open the hearing, Have the record) since each is a standalone list entry in the source rather than a mid-sentence fragment; a running page header (Part B Procedural Safeguards Notice 6) splits one quoted passage in the Independent Educational Evaluations section, handled here by quoting the two contiguous spans on either side of the header separately. Capture pending: the state complaint and due process hearing forms and cover letters, the mediation request form and brochure, the Special Education Directory, the full text of HAR Chapter 60, and the CADRE guides linked from the Dispute Resolution page. Internet Archive captures: to be added. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed 2026-08-25. Corrections on the record in this log: hello@fieldassembly.net.