Connecticut special education law: 45 school days from your letter to services
Your letter to the district is itself the referral in Connecticut, and it sends your child to a Planning and Placement Team. Those 45 school days run from that letter to the day services are actually delivered, and the wait for your signature is carved out of the count. 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 Connecticut
Send the principal a letter
Write the referral yourself. Date it, name your child, and say what worries you; Connecticut needs no district form.
Expect a PPT
The district answers a referral by convening a Planning and Placement Team, the PPT, which decides whether to evaluate.
Return your signature
Sign and send it back inside ten days. The count stops while the form sits with you, and that wait is added on.
Ask for the reports
Request the evaluation results in writing once the PPT is scheduled, because Connecticut sends them only when asked.
The evaluation request letter writes step one for you, in the words a district answers.
Bureau of Special Education — Written complaints against a Connecticut district land here, and this bureau answers questions about the timelines it administers.
What qualifies a child in Connecticut
Connecticut’s PPT has to answer three questions, and a yes on the first two still leaves the third open.
- A disability named in IDEA or in Connecticut’s own education statute.
- Educational performance the disability is affecting, with data in the PPT’s record to show it.
- A need for instruction the general classroom does not already provide.
What the rule says
The state wrote it this way:
“In the case of a referral made during the academic year … The individualized education program shall be implemented within forty-five days of referral or notice, exclusive of the time required to obtain parental consent.”
Conn. Agencies Regs. 10-76d-13(a)(1)
Connecticut’s own manual counts those in school days, so summer sits outside the count and a spring referral can run into the fall.
The deadlines Connecticut 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Referral to services in place | 45 school days | A finished evaluation report does not end this count, so watch the date the program actually starts.CSDE manual, chapter 4 |
| Consent returned to the district | 10 days | Your window to return the signed form; the regulation keeps this stretch out of the 45.Conn. Agencies Regs. 10-76d-13(a)(4) |
| Notice of a PPT meeting | 5 school days | Counted back from the meeting date, unless you waive the notice to get a PPT sooner.Conn. Gen. Stat. 10-76d(a)(10)(C) |
| Evaluation results, on request | 3 school days | Before the first PPT where those results are discussed, so you read them ahead of the room.Conn. Gen. Stat. 10-76d(a)(10)(G) |
| Full copy of the IEP | 5 days after the PPT | The PPT starts these five days, and only when no copy went home from the meeting.Conn. Agencies Regs. 10-76d-13(a)(6) |
| Out-of-district placement in place | 60 days | Counted from the same referral date, for a program the PPT places outside your district.Conn. Agencies Regs. 10-76d-13(a)(2) |
What Connecticut 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 letter is a referral
- Federal law names no referral form. Connecticut’s rule 10-76d-7 makes a parent’s written concern the referral, so name it when a form is asked for.
- The out-of-district clock
- Connecticut gives a placement outside your district 60 days instead of 45, and a district that overshoots owes the state board written proof of its efforts.
- One more school year
- IDEA’s floor stops at twenty-one. Section 10-76d runs to the end of the school year a student turns twenty-two, unless a diploma ends it first.
If the school says no
Connecticut answers a referral through the PPT, so a no arrives as a team decision with a paper trail.
- The PPT’s decision goes in the meeting summary; ask for that page and read what the team weighed.
- Ask which date the district counted as the referral, since a summer letter can carry the next school year’s first day.
- The state bureau takes a written complaint about how a district ran this timeline, with your dates attached.
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
- Connecticut regulation 10-76d-13: special education timelinesThe rule quoted here.
- CSDE Special Education Procedures and Practices ManualHow Connecticut runs the count.
- Connecticut General Statutes, chapter 164Section 10-76d in full.
- The federal evaluation rule (34 CFR 300.301)The floor every state builds on.