Status: MDE receipts are being released as each record clears public-release review.
Updated June 25, 2026
The timeline is the hook: MDE allegedly sent sensitive student and complaint data first, then later demanded external parent-verification proof before releasing the accountability records needed to understand what it had done.
Our hope had been simple: once we got the information to the proper agencies, something would happen. We had spent months trying to get a straight answer about whether the District's child-find, special-education, safety-planning, and educational-access record had actually been reviewed by the people responsible for reviewing those things.
MDE was supposed to be the lane for child-find and special-education oversight. So we filed. Then the dispute became about gates, lanes, and whether redacted summaries can substitute for actual agency review.
What happened
We filed one report. It was rejected because, according to the response, it did not fit the lane correctly.
MDE told us we could resubmit. We did that the next business day.
The resubmission was not a casual resend. It was specifically tailored to the requirements MDE identified: narrower, lane-conscious, and framed around child-find and special-education obligations, direct review of source records, and the limits of what a parent-facing redacted summary can actually prove.
We were not asking MDE to decide every adjacent issue. We were asking the state education agency responsible for special-education oversight to look at the child-find and education-access record before treating the matter as outside its responsibility.
The point of the resubmission
The resubmission targeted the District's refusal to participate in safety planning and Child Find. Because these complaints have a one-year lookback window, the resubmission specifically included counts anchored inside that time window.
It also asked MDE not to rely only on the District's redacted summaries. Those summaries recognize the relevant categories, but the family-facing version does not show the dates used, the safety-planning refusal record, the child-find notice and evaluation record, the educational-impact record, or the basis for screening the in-window counts out.
In other words: if MDE believed those counts were outside its complaint window, outside its lane, or otherwise not actionable, it could identify the dates, records, and legal basis it used. But the redacted local summary should not be treated as the same thing as agency review.
Why the LGE matters
LGE means local government entity. In this context, the important practical point is the public-side entity MDE's own organization records connect to a nonpublic school. IDEA uses the related term LEA, or local educational agency.
That matters because parentally placed private-school Child Find does not simply vanish when a family removes a child from the public building. For parentally placed private-school students, the LEA where the private school is located has a locate, identify, and evaluate duty for students suspected of having disabilities.
The complaint therefore pointed to MDE's own organization record identifying PLSAS as the public representative for the nonpublic placement. That is why this was not just a historical withdrawal argument: MDE was being asked whether the public entity tied to that placement still had Child Find responsibility while safety-planning and educational-access problems remained unresolved. This served to push the violation date on our complaint out until the end of the school year.
Where it stands
So far our experience has been...well, take a look at item #3 in the resubmitted complaint and MDE's response, then judge for yourself. The problem with getting cute about access gates is that eventually you have to account for your own sequence.
Item #3 specifically asks MDE to identify the dates and record basis it used to screen out the child-find and special-education allegations, including whether it considered the counts specifically included within the one-year lookback window. That is the in-lane special-education question we thought the resubmission was built to put squarely in front of the agency.
MDE later stated that it could not verify we were the student's parents without additional external proof. That position creates a very ugly accounting problem: before invoking that gate to withhold the review dates and screening basis, MDE had already transmitted sensitive private child data to us. If MDE's position is that it did not know whether we were authorized parents, then MDE needs to explain why it was comfortable sending private child data first and only demanding outside proof, such as a birth certificate or equivalent verification, when the requested records would show how it screened out the special-education complaint.
That is the one-way privacy valve problem. Privacy laws exist to protect children, not institutions. They should not become a system where sensitive child data can move out when it is convenient, but the accountability records needed to test an agency decision stay locked behind a newly asserted access barrier. There is only one word for that: gross.