Mississippi

Mississippi does not write a freestanding special-education code. Its rules are State Board Policy Chapter 74, Rule 74.19 (codified at Miss. Admin. Code Title 7, Part 3, Rule 74.19; the document itself is captioned “Title 7: Education K-12, Part 34”), State Policies Regarding Children with Disabilities under IDEA 2004, effective September 15, 2013. Rule 74.19 restates the federal Part B regulations and inserts Mississippi-specific notes and overrides. Implementation detail appears in MDE’s multi-volume Procedures for State Board Policy Chapter 74, Rule 19. Volume III was rewritten in January 2026; older volumes retain earlier revision dates. No official announcement of a pending replacement evaluation volume was located, so do not speculate about one.

1. Initial evaluation timeline

60 calendardays from the public agency’s receipt of informed written parental consent - and the 60 days runs to the evaluation report, not to the eligibility meeting. Volume I: “After securing informed written parental consent to conduct an evaluation, the MET has a maximum of sixty (60) calendar days in which to complete the evaluation.“ The completion date is pinned to the paperwork: ”the date the report was completed … serves as the date that the evaluation is completed; therefore, it must be within sixty (60) calendar days of parental consent“ (where individual reports are used, ”the date of the last report submitted“ controls).

Calendar days means calendar days. There is no summer tolling and no school-day conversion - unlike Pennsylvania (which stops the clock for summer) or Indiana (which counts only instructional days), a Mississippi consent signed in May runs straight through the summer. The only escapes are the three enumerated exceptions (Volume I): (a) “The parent repeatedly fails or refuses to produce the child for evaluation”; (b) “The child transfers to another public agency after the timeline has begun but before eligibility could be determined”; and (c) the MET is using RtI progress-monitoring data to identify a Specific Learning Disability, “the data do not clearly indicate the presence or absence of a disability at the end of the sixty (60) day time period, and the public agency and the parent mutually agree in writing to extend the time period.“ (Volume I’s parallel list at Chapter 1 states the first exception as the child moving ”out of the jurisdiction for the public agency.“)

The front end is where Mississippi is unusually parent-friendly - and where districts most often default. A request for an initial evaluation may be written or verbal, from “any source who has knowledge of or interest in a child ages birth through twenty-one (21).” Once made, “a Multidisciplinary Evaluation Team (MET) … must be convened within fourteen (14) calendar days to review the request,“ and ”Day one is the day the parent, teacher, Teacher Support Team (TST) member or representative of another public agency makes the request to the LEA.“ Requests ”must not be limited by the number per year or the time of year requests are received,“ and the agency ”must respond to any requests within fourteen (14) calendar days including requests made when school is not in session.“ If the MET decides to evaluate, prior written notice, the consent form, and procedural safeguards go to the parent within seven (7) days; the 60-day clock then starts on the returned written consent. See § 9 below.

Sources: MDE Volume I - Child Find, Evaluation and Eligibility (PDF) (timelines at pp. 7, 16, 30-31); MDE - Initial Evaluation and Eligibility Flowchart (Appendix EE.B) (PDF); State Board Policy Chapter 74, Rule 74.19 (PDF); MDE - Special Education Policies and Procedures.

2. Eligibility-to-IEP timeline

Mississippi stacks three deadlines after the evaluation closes, all in calendar days:

• Eligibility determination meeting within 14 calendar days of completion of the evaluation. “The MET, which includes the parent, must meet within fourteen (14) calendar days of the completion of the evaluation to determine if the child is eligible.” Note the consequence: the eligibility meeting sits outside the 60-day evaluation window, so the lawful consent-to-eligibility outer bound is 74 calendar days, not 60.

• Evaluation report(s) to the parent at least 7 calendar days before the eligibility meeting, “unless the parent waives this right in writing.” Volume I works the arithmetic explicitly: if the meeting is set 10 calendar days after the evaluation is completed, “the MET has up to three (3) calendar days to provide the parent the evaluation report(s).” The report “must not include any statements regarding the determination of eligibility or disability category.”

• IEP developed within 30 calendar days of the eligibility determination. “The child’s IEP must be developed within thirty (30) calendar days of the date the child is determined to be eligible for special education by the MET“ - either at a meeting held immediately after the eligibility meeting or at a separate meeting inside the 30 days. ”Once developed, the IEP must be implemented immediately,“ and informed parental consent is required before the initial IEP is implemented (Miss. Code Ann. § 37-23-137(1)(b)).

Outer bound, consent to initial IEP: 60 + 14 + 30 = 104 calendar days. Practitioners should calendar all three legs separately; the 30-day IEP leg is the one districts most often treat as elastic.

Sources: MDE Volume I (PDF) (pp. 30-35); Miss. Code Ann. § 37-23-137 (Justia); Initial Evaluation and Eligibility Flowchart (PDF).