Private school placement by parents
When parents enroll their child in a private school, the child may be eligible to receive some special education and related services from the school district that serves the town where the private school is located. The services that the child will receive are described in a “service plan.”
However, “parent placed” children are not automatically entitled to receive any or all of the IEP services that they would have received if they were enrolled in public school. What services these children receive is entirely dependent on the school district’s decisions regarding the way that they will spend the portion of their special education funding that legally must be used for services to children in local private schools.
More information regarding this complicated subject is available in a booklet at the U.S. Department of Education website.
Unilateral private school placement by parents
If parents are enrolling their child in a private school because they believe that the child’s school district has not offered appropriate services for the child, the parents may be entitled to receive full or partial reimbursement for this “unilateral placement,” if they show, through due process procedures, that:
Further information is available within pages 40-41 of the Procedural Safeguards (“Requirements for Unilateral Placement by Parents of Children in Private Schools”).