When is an IEP NOT a contract for service?

 When is an IEP not a contract for service?

 

And IEP is a legal contract for service according to both state and federal law.  But what exactly does that contract mean in real time terms. Sometimes not much.

The law stipulates that a member of the IEP team must include someone with the authority to commit the resources of the school system.  Much of the time that person is not in attendance at the meeting.  Consequently, commitments are made on the IEP but there is no commitment of resources to deliver.    

Speech therapy services are routinely not delivered as specified on the IEP.  Lack of staff is generally given as the reason.

Transportation is a related service on an IEP.  Many families do not know this fact so they just assume that transportation will be delivered.   Transportation was made a related service since it was determined early on that offering a program but without a system to get the child to the program was an empty promise.   This situation is particularly true because it is not unusual for the special education services to be offered in a school other that the child’s home school.  Transportation, as other related services, must be added to the IEP as a related service.  Otherwise, the child falls into the general transportation pool.

Since the pandemic school systems have struggled mightily to maintain a sufficient number of bus drivers.  When they can’t, the system cancels transportation and/or offers families reimbursement of a mileage fee if they transport.

Here’s the rub, many families do not have the vehicle or the people to pick up and deliver children to school particularly if those schools are a good distance from the child’s home.

The situation is different for plain kids.  First and foremost, plain kids do not have a legal right to transportation.    It is a service provided by the school district.  Secondly, almost all plain kids go to a neighborhood school.  Children with disabilities are supposed to have a binding contract for that service if the parents were smart enough to include it in the IEP.  So what happens when the school district unilaterally decides there will be no transportation on any given day.   Unfortunately, usually not much.   Sure, parents jump and shout and complain.   But they seldom file a formal complaint with the State Department of Education and the local school system for a violation of the child’s IEP.   Families struggle to try to get their kids to school some kind of way.   But the children lose out.   And the legal contract for a service as written in the IEP is a contract written in disappearing ink.