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Tool 26: Prior Written Notice: the Paper They Must Hand You - Every Single Time

THE RULE

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), your school district must give you written notice a reasonable time before it proposes to initiate or change - or refuses to initiate or change - the identification, evaluation, or educational placement of your child, or the provision of a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to your child (34 C.F.R. § 300.503(a); 20 U.S.C. § 1415(b)(3)).

The law calls this prior written notice - “prior” because it comes before the change, not after. Everyone at the table calls it PWN. Notice the two halves of the trigger. Districts send PWN readily when they propose something. The half that belongs to you is the refusal: when the district says no - to an evaluation, a service, a placement change, anything touching FAPE - it owes you the same paper.

The notice must contain 7 things (34 C.F.R. § 300.503(b)):

• A description of the action the district proposes or refuses (34 C.F.R. § 300.503(b)(1)).

• An explanation of why (34 C.F.R. § 300.503(b)(2)).

• A description of each evaluation procedure, assessment, record, or report the district used as a basis for its decision (34 C.F.R. § 300.503(b)(3)).

• A statement that you have protection under the procedural safeguards, and - unless the notice is an initial referral for evaluation - how to get a copy of them (34 C.F.R. § 300.503(b)(4)).

• Sources you can contact for help understanding these rights (34 C.F.R. § 300.503(b)(5)).

• A description of the other options the IEP team considered, and why each was rejected (34 C.F.R. § 300.503(b)(6)).

• A description of any other factors relevant to the decision (34 C.F.R. § 300.503(b)(7)).

The notice must be written in language understandable to the general public, and provided in your native language or other mode of communication unless that is clearly not feasible (34 C.F.R. § 300.503(c)(1)). If your language is not a written one, the district must translate the notice orally, make sure you understand it, and keep written evidence that it did (34 C.F.R. § 300.503(c)(2)).

When you hear a no, one sentence starts the machinery: “I disagree, and I am requesting prior written notice under 34 C.F.R. § 300.503.” Tool 89 is built entirely around that sentence and where to use it.

WHY IT MATTERS

A no spoken in a hallway leaves nothing behind. A no delivered under 34 C.F.R. § 300.503 is a dated document in which the district must state its decision, its reasons, the evidence behind it, and the options it turned down. Items 3 and 6 do the heavy lifting. If the district relied on real data, the notice shows you exactly what to challenge. If it relied on nothing, the notice shows that too.

This is why PWN is the most-used tool in this book. Every rung of the dispute ladder - the state complaint, mediation, due process (Tools 90, 91, and 92; the ladder itself is Tool 88) - is decided by people reading paper. A folder of PWNs is the record of every decision the district made about your child, in the district’s own words. You are not building a case so much as asking the district to keep its own honest diary.