Opinion
CV156032317S
11-10-2016
Heather Murray et al. v. State Board of Education
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION
Henry S. Cohn, Judge
This is an administrative appeal brought pursuant to General Statutes § 10-187 by the plaintiffs Heather and Jamie Murray from a November 19, 2015 final decision of an impartial hearing board (hearing officer) of the state board of education (the board). The hearing officer held that under § 10-186 Region 15 School Board (the district) correctly concluded that the plaintiffs' children were not eligible to attend the district's schools as they did not actually reside in the district. The district is an intervening defendant.
The plaintiffs are aggrieved for the purposes of § 4-183 as their position was rejected by the hearing officer. The plaintiffs, immediately before the hearing in this matter on September 27, 2016, had relocated to Middlebury. Thus their children are eligible to attend the district schools at this time. The issue arose as to whether this rendered the appeal moot. The parties subsequently agreed that mootness did not apply as the plaintiffs remain potentially liable for damages for the period of time that the children attended the district schools, allegedly without district approval.
The record shows the following. The plaintiffs and their two children live in a house that lies within the city of Waterbury. A small vacant portion of their lot adjacent to the house is within the Town of Middlebury. The plaintiffs' home has a Middlebury address. Their children have been enrolled in the district schools since 2008. The plaintiffs' proof of residency in 2008 was their Middlebury address, and a copy of their mortgage with the Middlebury address, and this was accepted by the district at that time as proof of residency. (Return of Record, ROR, pp. 00016-20.)
On December 1, 2014, the City of Waterbury sent a letter to the plaintiffs concerning alleged zoning violations on their property. This letter, copied to the Town of Middlebury, indicated that the plaintiffs' home was located in Waterbury. The Town of Middlebury supplied this letter to the district, and based on the letter, the district informed the plaintiffs that they were not eligible to send their children to the district schools as residents of Waterbury.
On September 24, 2015, the District gave the plaintiffs a hearing to determine the issue of residency. After the taking of evidence by both the district and the plaintiffs, who were represented by counsel, the district held on September 29, 2015 that the " dwelling on the property . . . is actually located in the City of Waterbury, " and that [the plaintiffs' children] " reside in the City of Waterbury and not the town of Middlebury."
Pursuant to § 10-186(b)(2), the plaintiffs appealed to the board and a hearing was held before a hearing officer on October 29, 2015. On November 19, 2015, the hearing officer made the following findings of fact:
1. The students are under 18 years of age and attended Region #15 schools during the school years 2014-2015 and the 2015-2016 school years to the date of this hearing.
2. The respondent denied school accommodations to the students after a hearing held on September 24, 2015. The appellant appealed therefrom to the State Board of Education. The Waterbury Board of Education was joined as a party.
3. The appellants' children commenced attendance in the Region #15 schools on the dates when each was eligible for school attendance.
4. On or about December 1, 2014, officials from the town of Waterbury notified the Region #15 Board of Education that the town had received a copy of a letter sent to the appellants by the City of Waterbury concerning zoning violations on their property.
5. The aforementioned letter made clear that the appellants' actual dwelling is located in Waterbury.
6. A small portion of the property on which the appellants' dwelling is located is within the town line of the town of Middlebury, which is a member of the Region #15 School District.
The hearing officer reached the following conclusions. The plaintiffs' dwelling was entirely in Waterbury, while a " small portion of the lot" is in Middlebury, a town in the district. Section 10-186(a) provides in effect in the words of the hearing officer that " when a dwelling is bisected by a town line the students living in the dwelling have a right to attend school in either district." The hearing officer reasoned that where the dwelling is located solely in one town, that town is the appropriate town for attendance. The hearing officer based his conclusion on the legislative history of P.A. 97-31 that added the provision, a proposed amendment that was rejected at the same time, as well as McGarry v. State Board of Education, Superior Court, judicial district of New Britain, Docket No. CV 000502744, (April 2, 2001).
This provision was added to § 10-186 by P.A. 97-31.
This unadopted amendment would have allowed a child to attend school in either town if the town line ran through the property, as opposed to the dwelling.
The hearing officer held that he did not have the authority to reach three other issues raised by the plaintiffs: (1) That the district was authorized under the General Statutes to promulgate its own residency standards, (2) that the plaintiffs' children met such residency standards as promulgated by the district, and (3) that under the factual record, the district was estopped to deny free public education to the plaintiffs' children. The Decision and Order of the hearing officer was that the " students are residents of the Town of Waterbury. The Region #15 Board of Education is not responsible for providing them with a free public education." (ROR, pp. 0006-10.) This appeal followed.
The Appellate Court has set forth the standard of review in a similar case as follows:" In accordance with the Uniform Administrative Procedure Act, General Statutes § § 4-166 through 4-189, we review an administrative agency's decision for abuse of discretion to determine whether there is substantial evidence in the administrative record to support the agency's findings of basic fact and whether the conclusions drawn from those facts are reasonable . . . With regard to questions of fact, it is neither the function of the trial court nor of this court to retry the case or to substitute its judgment for that of the administrative agency . . . Even as to questions of law, [t]he court's ultimate duty is only to decide whether, in light of the evidence, the [agency] has acted unreasonably, arbitrarily, illegally, or in abuse of its discretion.
" Under this standard, the [c]onclusions reached by [the agency] must be upheld by the [reviewing] court if they are reasonably supported by the record. The credibility of the witnesses and the determination of issues of fact are matters solely within the province of the [agency] . . . The question is not whether the [reviewing] court would have reached the same conclusion . . . but whether the record before the [agency] supports the decision reached . . . If a [reviewing] court finds that there is substantial evidence to support [an agency's] findings, it cannot substitute its judgment for that of the [agency] . . . If there is conflicting evidence in support of the [agency's] stated rationale, the reviewing court . . . cannot substitute its judgment as to the weight of the evidence for that of the [agency] . . . The agency's decision must be sustained if an examination of the record discloses evidence that supports any one of the reasons given.
" Although our review of agency determinations generally is deferential, we do not defer to the [agency's] construction of a statute--a question of law--when . . . the [provisions] at issue previously ha[v]e not been subjected to judicial scrutiny or when the [agency's] interpretation has not been time tested. When a case presents a question of law and does not involve an agency's time-tested interpretation of its regulations . . . the standard of review is [plenary]." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Mangiafico v. State Board of Education, 138 Conn.App. 677, 683-85, 53 A.3d 1066 (2012). The court applies the Mangiafico statement of the law to this appeal as the standard of review.
There is no question, and the plaintiffs do not raise as an issue, the proposition that under traditional § 10-186 analysis, the hearing officer correctly ruled that Waterbury, not the district, was the proper town for the plaintiffs' children to attend. Under § 10-220, children are eligible to attend school in the town in which they actually reside. See also Mangiafico, supra at 686: " the hearing board determined that, by using the term 'actual residence' in § 10-186(b)(2), the legislature expressed its intent to mean something narrower than what the term 'residence' can connote in other contexts."
In addition, the hearing officer correctly interpreted the clause of § 10-186(a) providing that the student has an option of attending either school district where the dwelling is bisected by a town line. Where this bisecting does not occur, the location of the dwelling in one town is the crux of the determination of residence. This was also the holding of McGarry, supra . Under the substantial evidence test, cited above, the factual record establishes that the plaintiffs' dwelling was wholly in Waterbury, and therefore, the children's actual residency for the purposes of § 10-186 and § 10-220 is Waterbury.
Rather than making a claim relying on § 10-186, as discussed above, the plaintiffs argue that the district developed its own standards as to what constitutes residence and that this alternative standard was not followed in their case. They contend that the hearing officer erred in not considering this additional issue. Whether or not the hearing officer correctly concluded that his authority did not extend to these issues, the court will consider them under § 10-187, allowing a § 4-183 appeal whenever a parent is " aggrieved by the finding of the hearing board." Rayhall v. Akim Co., 263 Conn. 328, 819 A.2d 803 (2003); " [T]his court has jurisdiction to review a . . . challenge on appeal from the decision of an administrative agency, despite the agency's lack of jurisdiction to rule on the . . . claim." St. Paul Travelers Companies, Inc. v. Kuehl, 299 Conn. 800, 12 A.3d 852 (2011).
The court, while able to consider the plaintiffs' argument, does not agree with it. First, there is no legal provision, statutory or otherwise, that allows a town or district to develop its own criteria for " residence." The Mangiafico case specifically recites § 10-220 as the basis for the principle that the child must actually reside in the town to be authorized to attend school in the town. Mangiafico relies on § 10-186 as setting forth the procedure by which towns and on appeal the state board is to resolve the question of residency. 138 Conn.App. at 685-86. The provisions of the statutes allowing for tuition payments to a city other than that of residence or agreements that one town might enter into with another are irrelevant to the issue of the right to free education.
In addition, the record does not support a conclusion that the district did, in fact, promulgate " its own eligibility criteria." The record shows that the district's " Proof Of Residency" (ROR, pp. 00022-23) follows the standard procedure of § 10-186, including proof of residency by submitting of a " Mortgage/Deed, Rental agreement, Current Mortgage Bill with Name and Address Listed." The listing of district streets on a website, the comments made to the plaintiffs by their realtor on purchase, and the location of their home for payment of property tax do not amount to proof by substantial evidence that the district had adopted its own policy.
The court observes that the plaintiffs have established that they submitted to the district, when enrolling their children, proof that met its residency rule. As noted above, the plaintiffs submitted to the district a copy of their mortgage with their Middlebury address. It was only subsequently, due to the Waterbury letter, that the district re-evaluated the situation These facts are not in the McGarry record. On the other hand, the court agrees with the district (Brief, p. 12) that it would be a mistake to prohibit the district from taking a second look at a later date of the initial submission by the parents. The strict " actual residence" standard would be undercut if a town were obliged to rely solely on the documents submitted on enrollment and could not make any subsequent investigation.
The plaintiffs ask the court to consider the equities of their effort to comply with the district's residency rule. On the other hand, they have never denied that their home, or dwelling, as § 10-186 denominates it, lies entirely in Waterbury.
The court also rejects the plaintiffs' argument regarding estoppel based upon the analysis in McGarry . The doctrine of estoppel requires a party to induce another party and the other party must change his or her position in reliance thereon. See also Pet Car Products, Inc. v. Barnett, 150 Conn. 42, 53-54, 184 A.2d 797 (1962). The plaintiffs cannot rely for this proof on the fact that Richardson Street appears on the district's website as some addresses on this street are not in Middlebury. As indicated, the plaintiffs cannot rely on statements of their realtor on purchase regarding conversations with unidentified town officials.
For the reasons stated, the appeal is dismissed.