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Tool 77: Building-to-Building Moves: the Transfer Packet You Assemble, Not the School

THE RULE

When your child moves from the elementary school to the middle school, or from the middle school to the high school, no new federal rule switches on. There is no federal transfer regulation for a move inside one district. The transfer rules apply when a child moves to a new public agency. Your child never left this one.

That is the point, and it is worth saying plainly: the IEP belongs to the district, not to the building. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the district must have an IEP in effect for your child at the beginning of each school year (34 C.F.R. § 300.323(a)). The new building is the same district in September that the old one was in June.

Four existing rules do the work of a transfer rule. You can point to all 4.

The IEP must reach the people who carry it out. The district must make the IEP accessible to each regular education teacher, special education teacher, related services provider, and any other provider responsible for implementing it (34 C.F.R. § 300.323(d)(1)). Each of those people must be informed of 2 things: their own specific responsibilities under the IEP, and the specific accommodations, modifications, and supports the child must receive (34 C.F.R. § 300.323(d)(2)).

Placement is decided by a group, at least once a year. The placement decision is made by a group that includes the parents and people who know the child, the evaluation data, and the placement options (34 C.F.R. § 300.116(a)(1)). The placement itself is determined at least annually, is based on the IEP, and is as close as possible to home (34 C.F.R. § 300.116(b)). Unless the IEP requires some other arrangement, your child is educated in the school he or she would attend if not disabled (34 C.F.R. § 300.116(c)).

The IEP team reviews the IEP periodically, and at least once a year (34 C.F.R. § 300.324(b)(1)(i)). A building change is a reason to ask for that review before the move, not after it.

A refusal owes you paper. If you ask the district to review or revise the IEP and it refuses, it must give you prior written notice explaining the refusal and the basis for it (34 C.F.R. § 300.503(a)(2); Tool 26). That is Appendix A, Letter 4.

WHY IT MATTERS

The document travels. The people do not.

Your child’s fifth-grade teacher knows that he shuts down when the room gets loud, that the timer works and the countdown does not, that he will ask for help if you ask him privately and never if you ask him in front of the class. None of that is in the IEP. It lives in a person who is staying in the elementary building.

In June, your child has 1 teacher who knows him. In September, he has 7 who do not, on a schedule with 4 room changes, in a building where he cannot find the bathroom. The paperwork says the same thing it said in May. Everything around the paperwork has changed.

The receiving building will get a file. A file is not a briefing. What the file does not say, the new team may learn by watching your child struggle with it - in October, in November, at the pace a school year allows. A packet and a meeting can shorten that.