Transportation and boundary exemptions

[Elemeno]

I must preface this with some background. A local elementary school is getting upgraded. As in, it has been torn and is currently being rebuilt. The students were bused to a few other schools in the district. Torn-Down school was situated in such a way in the community that it did not require a bussing program.

Now, a neighbor of mine is in a pickle. Her background: her child is in special education, and she preferred the program at another school, to be called School B, not the aforementioned torn-down school that her child is assigned to. I believe there was some IEP agreement to this, but it seems it was mostly her choice to fight for a boundary exemption. Because our Torn-Down school does not have a bussing program and because this is typical for boundary exemptions in our area, the onus was on Neighbor to handle transportation.

This was all well and good until her husband's work schedule changed. He was the one dropping off and picking up the student, but now is on a different shift... and Neighbor doesn't have a car. It's about a forty-minute walk to School B, across a busy highway.

Now, School B here is in fact one of the aforementioned schools taking in students. Neighbor hoped that she could just have her student take that bus, but apparently the school district's perspective is that the bus is for Torn-Down School's students, which Neighbor's kid is not among them.

So, the pickle. She can't get reliably or safely get her kid to school, but doesn't want to lose access to this school (her child is not in the grade bands that go to School B). She has also for whatever reason has been hesitant to call an IEP meeting about this.

Is this something an IEP meeting could help with or will this likely ultimately end up with "you wanted the boundary exemption, figure it out"?

[Carolyn Rowlett]

The first thing to do before anything else is to confirm that going to School B is in the IEP.  If so, she has a much stronger argument - the school district has to follow the IEP, which includes transportation to an out-of-home-school placement.  (It doesn't matter that the mom "preferred" the other school or it was "her choice to fight."  If it's in the IEP, it was decided upon by the team and must be implemented as written.  She needs to let go of the "this was my choice" mentality and focus on what is in the IEP.)  Then the argument is that just because she opted not to have transportation at one time does not mean she cannot now ask for transportation based on change of circumstances and her inability to take her child to the school.  You would hope this request for a transportation change to the IEP could be done by way of an email to the team, but under this more complicated situation, she may need to request an IEP meeting.  I can't imagine the IEP team would deny the change since otherwise they are not providing FAPE.  If placement is at School B, the district has to provide transportation to get the student there.

If it's not in the IEP, that would be a problem.  I can't imagine placing a special education student in a school other than the home school and not documenting this in the IEP, but if this is in fact the case, she still needs to request an IEP meeting to figure this out.  If School B is not in the IEP and the grade bands do not include student in School B, at a minimum the team needs to figure out how services will now be delivered due to this change in location.

[JSD24]

My school district policy is if you want your child to go to a different school other than the one assigned to your home, you need to provide transportation.  (And most of the time, they will not give the OK for this.)  If the district/IEP team decides on a different school from your neighborhood school, they provide transportation.

I'd ask if there is room on the bus for an extra student and if there is, can my child ride the bus so there is one less vehicle going to the school/less traffic on the road.  I'm not sure what this school's policy is with this sort of situation.

Is biking to school an option?  Should take less time on a bike than walking.

Another option is to say that going to school B is no longer an option due to the change in work schedule & you want your child back in the neighborhood school because getting him there is now a hardship.  If torn down school is their neighborhood school, you'd be at the district's mercy as to which school the child gets bussed to.  This gets them out of the 40 minute walk to school which might not be very fun in bad weather.

I think an IEP meeting is going to be needed with a lot of these options.

[EmilyM]

I think it would be worth trying for at an IEP meeting. She might want to start gathering data proving FAPE is best met at School B so even if the IEP isn't properly recommending School B at this time there will be a good argument to make it so.

Getting transportation in the IEP is also a good idea because if I'm understanding this correctly she will be in the same situation come next year/whenever the school is rebuilt and the bus program ends.