On November 10, 2022, the Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services issued a letter to state directors of special education addressing concerns related to the needs of highly mobile children with disabilities under IDEA, providing support resources and seeking assistance from educators on improving the educational stability of highly mobile children. The letter identified two key issues: (1) the evaluation procedure and eligibility determinations for highly mobile students; and (2) comparable services, including Extended School Year (ESY), provided to highly mobile students.
Highly mobile students should have timely and expedited evaluations and eligibility determinations, as required under IDEA. When a student transfers to a new school district during the school year, whether in the same state or in a different state, after the original school district began, but has not completed, an evaluation, both school districts must coordinate to ensure the completion of the evaluation. The DOE strongly recommends that school districts complete evaluations of highly mobile children on an expedited time frame. Issues regarding timely completing an evaluation include some school districts postponing the completion of an evaluation until the new school district’s MTSS process has been implemented. However, the DOE finds that practice can unnecessarily delay the evaluation of highly mobile children. Thus, once a parent provides initial consent for an evaluation, the school district must not delay completing the evaluation because of a pending MTSS or RTI. Furthermore, the efficient exchange of relevant student records is critical to the timely completion of a highly mobile child’s evaluation. Federal regulations permit the disclosure of educational records of highly mobile students to the school officials of the school or school district where the student is or seeks to be enrolled so long as such a disclosure is related to the student’s enrollment or transfer. Therefore, school districts should be proactive in providing and obtaining student record information to facilitate the timely and expedited completion of a highly mobile child’s evaluation.
The responsibility of school districts to provide comparable services to highly mobile students extends throughout the summer, including ESY services. When a child with an IEP transfers into a new school district, the new school must provide services comparable to those described in the child IEP from the previous school district. Comparable services must be provided until the new school district either adopts the child’s IEP from the previous district or develops and implements a new IEP in the case of in-state transfers or the new school district develops and implements a new IEP in the case of out-of-state transfers. Since the DOE interprets “comparable services” to mean services that are similar or equivalent to those services that were described in the child’s IEP from the previous school district, the new school district generally must provide services that are comparable to the required ESY services to a transfer student whose IEP contains such services. A school district cannot refuse to provide ESY services to a child simply because the services would be provided during the summer and the new school’s IEP team may not arbitrarily, or due to lack of resources, decrease the level of services provided to a child as a comparable service.
For more information about the impact of this DOE letter, contact any attorney in our Students/Special Education practice group.
Source: OSEP Policy Support 22-02
