Extended School Service

Extended School Year For Special Education Or Summer Recreation Program - Which is Best?

Is your school district offering a summer recreation program, in stead of extended school year services (ESY), for your child with autism? This article will discuss the difference between summer recreation programs, and extended school year services.

Extended school year services (ESY), are special education services, given outside of the regular school year. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), extended school year needs to be given to a child, if they require it to receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE).

A court case Reusch vs Fountain came up with several factors that need to be kept in mind, when determining if a child needs ESY services. These factors are; regression and recoupment, nature and severity of your child's disability, skills that are just being learned (emerging skills), whether the child's behavior interferes with their learning, and any special circumstances that relate to your child.

Academic remediation is a good reason to ask for ESY, if your child needs it.

3. Even if the summer recreation program is for children with a disability, it may not be appropriate for all children. Check out the daily schedule, talk to the staff, check on staff-child ratio. 4. Be careful when signing up your child for a summer recreation program, if your child has behavioral difficulty. 5. Summer recreation programs tend to be unstructured. 6. If your child needs life skills or functional training, ESY can provide that training. Are you the parent of a child currently receiving special education services? Special education services are considered an entitlement under Federal law (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act 2004--IDEA 2004). School districts are required to provide children a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) which includes all services needed for the child to benefit from their education. While parents must fight for these services, the child is entitled to them.

Since a child is entitled to all the services they need; it is truly illegal for a school district to state that they will not provide services, due to lack of money. The problem becomes that parents must prove that their child needs the services, and then fight for the school district to actually provide them!

If the school district is threatening to close a child's self contained class how will they educate the child if they close the class. Shutting programs that children need is also not legal!

Schools already receive a large amount of Federal and State tax money. 2. One reason school personnel may be threatening parents is because many parents do not know that schools cannot legally cut special education services or programs that their child needs! 3. School personnel may be trying to get parents to back down from asking for expensive services. I talk about this a lot in my book Disability Deception-about how schools do not want to provide services to children that may be costly-even though the child needs it. It is important for parents to advocate for their child because their child's life will be ruined if they do not receive an appropriate education.

Are you the parent of a child with autism or a learning disability,
who believes that your child needs educational services outside of the
school day?
This article will discuss the 6 factors that IEP teams must consider
when discussing Extended School Year (ESY).

Extended school year is educational and related services outside of
the regular school year. The child must need ESY, in order to receive
a free appropriate public education (FAPE). ESY can extend beyond
summer school, if the child needs it.

If
your child did not make progress during the school year, you could use
this to ask for ESY.

Factor 4: Interfering Behavior. Behavior that affects your child's
ability to benefit from special education.

Factor 5: Nature and Severity of Disability. Many school
districts were only offering extended school year services to children
with the most severe disabilities, this is not allowed.

Factor 6: Special circumstances that interfere with your child's
ability to benefit from special education. Was your child ill, or
missed a lot of school because of illness. You could use this reason
to ask for ESY services for your child.

Children with autism, and also learning disabilities often need
extended school year services, in order to benefit from their
education.