I am writing today because during the current school year, I've had an unusual number of cases in which the parents had the same special education issue.
• The parents in each case have a child with an IEP that includes behavior goals.
• The parents live and work in a town located 15 or more miles from the school building is located to and from which their children ride the school bus.
• Between late September and mid-December 2023, each of the children was suspended from school for the remainder of the school year after making a statement at school that was regarded as a threat by their school district.
• All of the children were evaluated and none of them were found to be a danger to themselves or others.
After the children missed ten days of school, their suspensions became a “change of placement,” requiring their school districts to provide them with services for the rest of the suspension period, to enable them to continue to participate in the general education curriculum and make progress toward their IEP goals. 281-41.530(4)(d).
• Each school district provided those services at a public school or education center located 19 to 36 miles away from the child’s home.
• To provide these children with a FAPE during the suspension period, their IEP teams should have added transportation as a related service to their IEPs. 281-41.34(1), or, contingent on the parent's willingness to provide the transportation, the school district should have compensated the parent for providing the transportation.
• However, when the parents asked their children’s IEP teams to add this to their IEPs, school administrators said their school districts do not provide transportation for suspended students, and the IEP teams were unwilling to add transportation to the IEPs.
Until after those parents contacted me and their matters were resolved, every school day they were making two round-trip home-to-facility drives (morning and afternoon).
• Depending on the specific home-to-facility distance from their homes to the facilities, the parents were driving distances ranging from 300 to 700 miles each week.
• Using the 2024 IRS mileage rate of $0.67, the parents' weekly expenses for those trips ranged from $201.00 to $467.00.
Each time I ponder these cases, I wonder -
- why did the school districts deny transportation when special education law so clearly requires them to provide transportation as a related service when due to the program's location, the children need transportation to access those services? 281-41.412(1), and
- why didn't the school district and area education agency professionals on the children's IEP teams recognize that denying transportation as a related service under these circumstances was inconsistent with providing the children with a Free Appropriate Public Education?
