An Alabama IEP starts at the PST: eight weeks of intervention your referral can waive
A dated referral from you goes to the IEP Team, which decides whether Alabama evaluates your child and whether the Problem Solving Team comes first. Once the district has your signed consent, 60 calendar days run to a finished evaluation and 30 more to a ruling. Start with the dates in your file: the day the school received your written request, the day you signed consent, and the date on the district’s latest notice.
How a child gets an IEP in Alabama
One page, two desks
Write your principal and your district’s special education coordinator; if writing is hard, Alabama makes the school take your referral down.
Name the PST waiver
The PST’s eight weeks start no evaluation clock, and the rule lets the IEP Team waive them when a parent referred.
Date your own copy
Alabama sets no deadline between your letter and the consent form, so date your copy: nothing else proves when the wait began.
Certify your own view
The Eligibility Committee includes you, so certify its report only when it matches what you saw, and file a dissent when it does not.
The evaluation request letter writes step one for you, in the words a district answers.
Special Education Services — One section of Alabama’s state department runs special education, and your district fills in its forms.
What qualifies a child in Alabama
A label alone does not get your child in; Alabama’s committee has to write down three separate findings.
- Alabama names thirteen areas, Emotional Disability and Developmental Delay among them.
- Each definition turns on schoolwork the disability holds back, proved with the components 290-8-9-.03 names.
- A related service by itself is not enough; the finding has to be specially designed instruction.
What the rule says
The state wrote it this way:
“The public agency has sixty (60) calendar days from the date [it] receives a parent’s signed consent for initial evaluation to conduct and complete an initial evaluation. The public agency has thirty (30) calendar days from the completion of the evaluation to determine initial eligibility.”
Ala. Admin. Code r. 290-8-9-.02(1)(b)
The clock does not stop at the last test; it stops when the committee has ruled.
The deadlines Alabama sets
School days and calendar days count differently, so read the unit in every row.
| What is being counted | By when | How it is counted |
|---|---|---|
| PST monitoring before or during | 8 weeks, at minimum | The team monitors before a referral or during the evaluation, and the strategies have to be judged unsuccessful.Ala. Admin. Code 290-8-9-.01(4) |
| Evaluation, consent to report | 60 calendar days | Alabama starts it the day the district receives your signed form, and counts through spring break and summer.Ala. Admin. Code 290-8-9-.02(1)(b) |
| Eligibility Committee decides | 30 calendar days | It runs from the day the evaluation is complete, rarely the day you hear about it.Ala. Admin. Code 290-8-9-.04(1) |
| Team meets to write it | 30 calendar days | From the day the committee says yes, though a summer meeting delays only when services start.Ala. Admin. Code 290-8-9-.05(2)(b) |
| A meeting you ask for | 30 calendar days | Once your child has an IEP, asking to revise it starts the count the day it reaches the district.Ala. Admin. Code 290-8-9-.05(11)3. |
| Findings letter from the state | 60 calendar days | Your signed complaint opens it, and only the past year is inside the state’s reach.Ala. Admin. Code 290-8-9-.08(9)(a) |
What Alabama adds to the federal floor
IDEA is the floor, not the ceiling. What a state adds on top is what you can ask for by name.
- Twenty records per teacher
- IDEA sets no caseload rule. Alabama holds a special education teacher to twenty records and a speech-language pathologist to thirty, records managed rather than students taught.
- Rights move at nineteen
- IDEA hands a state the age of majority. Alabama sets it at nineteen, so a parent still signs at eighteen.
- No cap on referrals
- Federal rules leave referral traffic to the district. Alabama bars limiting referrals by number or time of year, so name 290-8-9-.01(6)(c).
If the school says no
A refusal here is the IEP Team’s call, and Alabama then sends the child back to the building team.
- When nothing arrives, write again with your referral date and ask for the intervention documentation the IEP Team reviewed.
- The Special Education Rights booklet is owed at referral, and it sets out the independent evaluation you can ask for.
- A written complaint to the state superintendent reaches your district that day, because you send both copies.
A refusal arrives in writing under 34 CFR 300.503, naming what was refused and the data behind it.
This page organizes the state’s own words: it does not replace the current rule text, or advice from someone qualified in your state.
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Where this comes from
- Alabama’s evaluation rule, 290-8-9-.02Both clocks, in the state’s words.
- Mastering the Maze, Alabama’s special education processThe state’s own step list.
- Alabama’s Procedural Safeguards, Special Education RightsThe booklet owed at referral.
- The federal evaluation rule (34 CFR 300.301)The floor every state builds on.