The Arizona IEP clock: 15 school days to answer, then 60 to the MET
Send the school a written request, and Arizona gives the public education agency fifteen school days to start reviewing data or refuse in writing. The sixty calendar days your signed consent opened close on the day the Multidisciplinary Evaluation Team, the MET, decides whether your child qualifies. 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 Arizona
Write to two people
Send a dated written request to the principal and copy the special education director; Arizona calls your district or charter the public education agency.
Fifteen school days later
The agency either begins by reviewing existing data or sends prior written notice refusing the evaluation, and both answers are dated.
Sixty days start here
Read the consent form before you sign it, since the sixty days do not start until the agency receives it.
Get the dated MET report
Ask in writing for the MET determination date; without that date on paper you cannot show the sixty days ran out.
The evaluation request letter writes step one for you, in the words a district answers.
Exceptional Student Services — Arizona’s Exceptional Student Services division monitors public education agencies, offers mediation, and issues the written decision on a complaint.
What qualifies a child in Arizona
Nothing in Arizona is decided by a single evaluator; the Multidisciplinary Evaluation Team signs the eligibility finding as a group.
- The list in A.R.S. 15-761 runs from autism through visual impairment and includes preschool severe delay.
- Arizona’s MET has to tie the need for special education to the disability itself.
- The statute rules out a label whose determining factor is missed reading instruction or English-language background.
What the rule says
The state wrote it this way:
“The initial evaluation … shall be conducted within 60 calendar days from the public education agency’s receipt of the parent’s informed written consent and shall conclude with the date of the Multidisciplinary Evaluation Team (MET) determination of eligibility.”
Ariz. Admin. Code R7-2-401(E)(3)
Arizona puts the eligibility decision inside those sixty days, so a finished report with no MET meeting has not stopped the count.
The deadlines Arizona 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 |
|---|---|---|
| The agency’s first response | 15 school days | School days only, counted from the date your written request reached the agency.Ariz. Admin. Code R7-2-401(E)(4) |
| Evaluation through the MET decision | 60 calendar days | Your consent lands on day zero and the MET determination date closes the count.Ariz. Admin. Code R7-2-401(E)(3) |
| An agreed written extension | Up to 30 days | Added to the sixty days only by written agreement, so an unsigned delay is no extension.Ariz. Admin. Code R7-2-401(E)(5) |
| Review of an existing IEP | 45 school days | Your written review request starts it, and the meeting date is one you both agree.Ariz. Admin. Code R7-2-401(G)(7) |
| Warning before a graduation date | 1 year ahead | Counted back from the graduation date the transition plan estimates, and it reaches you in writing.Ariz. Admin. Code R7-2-401(G)(4)(a) |
| A decision on your state complaint | 60 calendar days | The department’s clock starts the day your complaint arrives, and the conduct behind it can be one year old.Ariz. Admin. Code R7-2-405.01(A)(2), (B) |
What Arizona 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.
- A named limit on waiting
- No federal rule caps how long a school may sit with your written request; Arizona stops it at fifteen school days.
- A review you can demand
- IDEA never dates a review a parent asks for; Arizona holds it inside forty-five school days once your letter names a basis.
- Notice before a diploma
- Arizona schools must write to you one year before the graduation date they expect, since a diploma ends the IEP.
If the school says no
Arizona’s refusal arrives as prior written notice, and a request that drew neither data review nor notice has missed fifteen school days.
- Arizona lets the agency answer by reviewing existing data, so ask for that meeting’s record and its date.
- Silence is not an answer here: name the fifteenth school day and ask which of the two the agency chose.
- A state administrative complaint goes to the department and to your agency on the same day you file it.
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
- Arizona Administrative Code, rules R7-2-401 and R7-2-405.01Every rule number here.
- Arizona Revised Statutes 15-761, the definitionsThe categories and the exclusions.
- Exceptional Student Services dispute resolutionWhere a complaint is filed.
- The federal evaluation rule (34 CFR 300.301)The floor every state builds on.