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"?