Louisiana

The published process

Placement during a dispute

"Except when your child has violated a LEA rule or has done something that presents a risk of harm to your child or others as described in the section entitled Procedures when Disciplining Children with Disabilities, your child shall remain in the current educational placement during any due process or court proceedings unless you and the LEA agree to another placement. If the hearing involves an application for initial admission to the LEA, your child, with your consent, must be placed in public school until the proceedings are finished." — Educational Rights notice, Student’s Placement during Due Process Proceedings.

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 your LEA," subject to conditions the notice lists. "If you request an IEE of your child at public expense, your LEA must, within 10 days, either:" "File a due process complaint to request a hearing to show that its evaluation of your child is appropriate; or" "Provide an IEE at public expense, unless the LEA demonstrates in a hearing that the evaluation of your child that you obtained did not meet the LEA criteria." "You are entitled to only one IEE at public expense each time the LEA conducts an evaluation with which you disagree." (Educational Rights notice, Independent Educational Evaluation)

Who may be present, and what record is made

At a due process hearing, both parent and LEA have the right to "Be accompanied and advised by legal counsel and by individuals with knowledge and training with respect to special education or the problems of students with disabilities"; to "Present evidence, confront, cross-examine, and compel the attendance of any witnesses"; and, as a parent, to "Decide whether your child (who is the subject of the hearing) will attend the hearing", to "Have the hearing opened or closed to the public", and to "Obtain a written or an electronic verbatim transcript of the proceedings and a written or electronic copy of the independent hearing officer’s written decision, including findings of fact, conclusions, and orders without cost to you." (Educational Rights notice, Due Process Hearing Rights) The IEP team is defined as "You, as the child’s parent or guardian", "Your child (when appropriate)", "A special education teacher or other special education provider", "A general education teacher (when appropriate)", "A representative of the LEA who is knowledgeable about specially designed instruction, curriculum, and resources", and "Other people whom you or the LEA wish to invite". (notice, Development of the Individualized Education Program) Recording of IEP meetings, as distinct from due process hearings, is not stated in the sources reviewed; the notice’s IEP-development and confidentiality sections were searched for "record," "tape," and "audio" and none address parent recording of a meeting.

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 Louisiana’s Educational Rights of Children with Disabilities (May 2025) except where noted.

On the Informal Complaint/ERP. "Informal complaints must be addressed by the LEA within 15 days of receipt of the complaint." "Informal complaints submitted to the ombudsman will be forwarded to the LEA's ERP representative within 2 days of receipt." (overview page) "Within 15 days after filing an Informal Complaint, the parents and the school district shall either sign a written resolution agreement or an agreement to extend the resolution period." (overview page)

On the Formal Complaint. "Formal complaints must be written and signed and must allege a violation that occurred not more than two years prior to the date that the complaint is received." "The LDOE has 60 days from receipt of the complaint or 45 days from the end of the ERP to issue a written decision to all parties on each of the allegations of the complaint." (notice, Formal Complaints) The overview page states the investigation timeline in the alternative form: "Unless the parties request an extension to attempt to resolve the dispute using ERP or an alternative resolution option, the LDOE Complaint Investigator has 45 days after the end of the initial 15-day ERP period or, if ERP is waived, 60 days after LDOE receives the Formal Complaint Investigation Request to issue written findings-decision" to all parties.

On requesting a due process hearing. "A request for a due process hearing must be made within two years of the date you knew or should have known about the alleged action forming the basis of your dispute with the LEA." This two-year limit does "not apply if you were prevented from requesting the hearing because the LEA specifically misrepresented that it had resolved the problem you complained about or if the LEA withheld pertinent information from you that it was required to provide you under the IDEA." (notice, Due Process Hearing Request Procedures)

On the LEA’s response and resolution meeting. "Within 10 days of receiving your request for a due process hearing, the LEA must" send written notice on the subject matter and a written response addressing the issues raised. "Within 15 days of receipt of a request for a due process hearing, the LEA shall convene a meeting called a" “resolution meeting.” "The resolution period ends 30 days after the filing of the due process hearing request if the parties have failed to reach an agreement." (notice, Local Educational Agency Response / Resolution Process)

On the written settlement agreement. "If you and the LEA enter into an agreement as a result of a resolution meeting, either party may void the agreement within three (3) business days of the time that both you and the LEA signed the agreement." (notice, Agreement Review Period)

On the hearing decision. "The independent hearing officer must conduct the hearing and mail you and the LEA a written decision within 45 calendar days of the expiration of the resolution period as discussed above. A hearing officer" (the sentence is interrupted mid-word by a running page header in the source PDF) "may grant specific extensions of time beyond the 45 calendar day time period at the request of either party." (notice, Due Process Hearing Timeline)

On civil action and attorney’s fees. A civil action following a hearing decision is available under the notice’s Civil Action section; the notice states no specific number of days to file in Louisiana courts beyond the exhaustion requirement described there. "An action for attorney fees must be filed in the appropriate state or federal court within 30 calendar days of a final decision that is not appealed." (notice, Attorney’s Fees)

LDOE Dispute Resolution Comparison Chart, as published. The notice includes a summary chart on page 31 (the "LDOE Dispute Resolution Comparison Chart" — the same title the overview page uses for its own linked, standalone version of this chart) that is laid out in a multi-column table format; its PDF text layer extracts in scrambled column order rather than as contiguous sentences, so its content is described here rather than quoted directly, to avoid presenting a reconstructed table as a verbatim quotation. As best the extracted table can be read: it gives no stated filing deadline for IEP Facilitation or Mediation; a filing window described in terms of two years from when the party knew or should have known of the problem for both Informal Complaint/ERP and Formal Complaint; and a two-year filing window from the date of the alleged violation for Due Process Hearing. On resolution timelines, it gives no stated deadline for IEP Facilitation or Mediation; a 15-day window from receipt of the Informal Complaint (subject to extension by joint request) for Informal Complaint/ERP; a 45-day window from the end of the ERP (subject to extension) for Formal Complaint; and a 45-day window from the end of the resolution period (subject to extension) for Due Process Hearing. This appears to diverge from the prose Formal Complaints section above, which states that a formal complaint "must allege a violation that occurred not more than two years prior to the date that the complaint is received" — a different framing (from the complaint’s receipt, not from when the party knew or should have known) than the chart’s apparent wording; both are reproduced as the sources state them, neither reconciled.

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. Captured first-party: the LDOE Dispute Resolution overview page (HTML, fetched directly, no date published on the page itself) and Louisiana’s Educational Rights of Children with Disabilities: Special Education Processes and Procedural Safeguards (PDF dated May 2025, text extracted in full with pdftotext). Findings recorded rather than smoothed: (1) the notice’s own Dispute Resolution Comparison Chart (page 31) is a multi-column table whose PDF text layer extracts in scrambled column order — described in prose on the page rather than quoted, to avoid presenting a reconstructed table as verbatim; its apparent Formal Complaint filing window (two years from when the party knew or should have known of the problem) appears to diverge from the notice’s prose Formal Complaints section, which states the window as "not more than two years prior to the date that the complaint is received" — both reproduced as the sources state them, neither reconciled; (2) recording of IEP meetings, as distinct from due process hearings, is not addressed anywhere in the notice’s IEP-development or confidentiality sections, searched specifically for this; (3) the overview page supplies the Division of Administrative Law (DAL) routing for due process hearings and the Informal Complaint/Early Resolution Process detail that the notice’s own Due Process Hearings and Formal Complaints sections do not spell out to the same depth, so both documents were needed for a complete picture of the routes; (4) the notice lists eight named Families Helping Families regional centers plus the statewide PTIC designation, one of the fuller parent-center listings captured in this project to date. Capture pending: the standalone Comparison Chart PDF and its translations, all five request-form PDFs and their translations, the Advocate-Parent Guide, the published hearing/complaint decision indexes, and Bulletin 1573 (Complaint Management Procedures), cited in the notice but not independently fetched. Internet Archive captures: to be added. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed 2026-08-25. Corrections on the record in this log: hello@fieldassembly.net.