Administrators LEAD & MANAGE MY SCHOOL
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act: Provisions Related to Children With Disabilities Enrolled by Their Parents in Private Schools
March 2011

PDF (1 MB)


Child Find

Each LEA must locate, identify, and evaluate all children with disabilities who are enrolled by their parents in private, including religious, elementary and secondary schools located in the LEA.

The child find process must be designed to ensure the equitable participation of parentally placed private school children with disabilities as well as to generate an accurate count of these children. After timely and meaningful consultation with representatives of private schools and representatives of parents of private school children with disabilities, the LEA must conduct a thorough and complete child find process to accurately determine the number of parentally placed children with disabilities attending private schools located in the LEA.

These child find activities must be similar to those the LEA undertakes for public school children. For instance, during a consultation meeting, private school officials may suggest distributing child find flyers in their weekly school bulletin so that more parents will be aware of this benefit.

The child find process for private school children must be completed in a time period comparable to that for public school children. This includes a requirement to conduct initial evaluations within 60 days of receipt of parental consent or within the timeframe established by the state.

The costs of carrying out child find, including individual evaluations, may not be considered in determining whether an LEA has met its obligations to expend a proportionate share of federal IDEA funds on providing equitable services. Child find obligations, including individual evaluations and reevaluations, exist independently from the requirement to expend a proportionate share of federal IDEA funds to provide equitable services to eligible parentally placed children with disabilities.



    Previous set of pages  7 | 8 | 9 Next set of pages TOC
Last Modified: 08/02/2017