By Sheila Wolfe IEP Services
THE ABCs OF IEPs EXTENDED SCHOOL YEAR (ESY) SER VICES Although we have barely started the new year, it is time to plan for the summer. Determining if a student has the need for extended school year (esy) services is complicated and often a point of extreme disagreement for the case conference committee. Parents need to know the factors in deciding if a student needs ESY and how to best advocate for their child’s right to these services.
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18 Special Needs Living • February 2022
ESY services are intended to prevent students with disabilities from losing important progress made during the typical school year and maintain skills vital to achieving progress during the upcoming school year. Evaluating and determining if a student qualifies for ESY is the responsibility of the case conference committee (CCC). It is important to remember that parents are equal members on the CCC, and the school cannot dictate if a student will receive ESY or not and what services will be provided. In other words, it is not appropriate for the school to announce at a CCC meeting that the school provides an “enrichment program” to its students with disabilities during the summer months and the parent can choose to send their student to this program or decline the services. ESY services must be individualized based on the needs of each student. Parents can access Indiana’s technical assistance document on determining ESY services at: https://www.doe. in.gov/sites/default/files/specialed/technicalassistance-document-determining-need-extendedschool-year-services-draft.pdf In this document, the following factors have been identified by the courts as being relevant to the determination of ESY services: a. Critical learning needs b. Degree of progress on IEP goals c. Least restrictive environment (LRE) d. Independence from caretakers e. Emerging needs and/or break-through learning opportunities f. Regression and recoupment g. Interfering behavior h. Severity of the disability i. Special circumstances Each of these determining factors is somewhat subjective and hard to support with raw data. However, as discussed in past articles, appropriate progress reports and data collection on goals is vital to helping the CCC determine ESY services. Briefly, we will review the most common supporting arguments for establishing ESY services. REGRESSION AND RECOUPMENT is often the focus of schools when looking at the provision of ESY services. ALL students lose a certain percentage of skills over the summer. Schools should be testing students each year when they return to school to determine an academic baseline of skills. In addition, these academic assessments should be administered around the end of the first semester and the end of the school year. Parents should carefully analyze these assessments to calculate the degree to which their student regresses in skills over the summer. Data is available from each school on the “typical” degree of regression for the student population
