A child with an IEP changing schools
The services do not travel by themselves. What travels is the record you carry and the dates you keep, and the gap families lose is the one between the last day at the old school and the first meeting at the new one. This route is about continuity across that boundary: not winning an argument, but making sure nothing quietly stops.
Read these in order: the record comes before the move, and the move before the new school’s first meeting. Each step below names the one chapter to open first.
What any particular state requires. Learn IEP Basics links the published source for each state rather than restating it, and so does this route — read it there, for the state you are moving to, not here. Being heard in a meeting that is going badly is the Making your case route. Nothing here is legal advice.
The route
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Before anything is packed
IEP Basics
Everything the new school will ask for, in one place that goes in the car rather than the truck: evaluations, the current IEP, progress reports, letters. A district can request records, but the family that arrives holding them loses no weeks.
Open atHow to Organize an IEP Binder and Plan the Year Ahead
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The two or three that cannot lapse
IEP Basics
Not everything can be protected at once in a new district. Turning what you see at home into a short written list of priorities is what lets you tell, in the first month, whether this is working.
Open atIEP Parent Concerns Letter: From Observations to Priorities
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What a move does to an IEP
IEP Basics
The transfer itself: what the new school has to do on arrival, what happens to the existing plan in the meantime, and the questions to ask before you enroll rather than after.
Open atIEP Transitions: Preschool, Moving, Age 16 and Adulthood
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If you are crossing a state line
IEP Basics
Timelines, eligibility categories and safeguards are set state by state, and the ones you have learned are the old state’s. The chapter sends you to the published source for the new one; read it before the first meeting, not during it.
Open atYour State's Special Education Rules and Safeguards Notice
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One calendar, both sets of dates
Plan Your House Move
The move calendar works back from the day, and the school dates belong on it: records requested, enrollment, the meeting you want in the first weeks. Two calendars is how a term goes by.
Open atMoving Timeline: A Move Calendar Worked Back From the Day
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The child’s own move
Plan Your House Move
A plan for the child as a person and not a logistics item: what they are told and when, what stays the same, and the last day at a school that mattered to them.
Open atMoving With Kids, Pets and Older Parents: A Plan for Each
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Before the first meeting at the new school
IEP Basics
A dated prep plan for a room where nobody has met your child. You are the only person at that table who knows what the last three years looked like, which makes what you bring the evidence.
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Writing down what was agreed
IEP Basics
The follow-up letter and the log. Across a transfer this is the step that matters most: it is the record that shows whether what was promised in September was still happening in November.
Open atAfter the IEP Meeting: Follow-Up Letter, Logs and Progress
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When the services do not appear
Conflict Management
Raising it early, without blame, with people you will be working with for years. This comes before the formal options, and handled well it is usually the end of it rather than the start.
Everything here is free, needs no account, and can be opened at any chapter. The other routes · all the manuals.