Your referral stands beside the SST’s in Georgia, and the sixty days start at consent
Put the referral in writing to the district, and Georgia’s rule counts it the same as one from the school’s Student Support Team. Your signed consent starts 60 calendar days of evaluation, and long school closures drop out of that 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 Georgia
Name the director
One dated email to the special education director, copied to the principal, is the referral Georgia’s rule is talking about.
Ask which team has it
Georgia schools route referrals through a Student Support Team, so ask in writing whether yours went to the SST or to evaluation.
Consent, and the calendar
The 60 calendar days run from the date the LEA logs your consent form, so ask which date it recorded.
The report you are owed
Georgia writes a separate eligibility report on every child it evaluates, and your copy of it costs nothing.
The evaluation request letter writes step one for you, in the words a district answers.
Division for Special Education Services and Supports — This division’s director receives Georgia’s signed complaints, and the dispute rule prints the mailing address to use.
What qualifies a child in Georgia
Georgia’s Eligibility Team seats you beside the qualified professionals, and it writes a report whichever way the decision goes.
- Georgia lists twelve eligibility areas, including significant developmental delay and emotional and behavioral disorder.
- The disability has to adversely affect academic, functional or developmental performance.
- The report states each component, so ask which component the Team could not write.
What the rule says
The state wrote it this way:
“Once a child is referred for an evaluation by a parent or Student Support Team (SST) … the initial evaluation … must be completed within 60 calendar days of receiving parental consent for evaluation.”
Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. r. 160-4-7-.04(1)(b)
Your referral counts on its own here, so nobody has to sponsor it before the clock can start.
The deadlines Georgia 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Consent to the eligibility decision | 60 calendar days | The LEA’s date stamp on your consent form opens the count, and the disability finding sits inside it.Georgia Rule 160-4-7-.04(1)(b) |
| Closures that pause it | 5 school days or more | Any shutdown that long drops out with its touching weekends, as does summer when teachers are off contract.Georgia Rule 160-4-7-.04(1)(b)1.(i) and (ii) |
| Spring consent, no summer pause | 30 days before year end | Look back from the last day of school, and consent inside that window keeps the sixty running.Georgia Rule 160-4-7-.04(1)(b)1.(ii)I. |
| The IEP that follows a yes | 30 days | The Eligibility Team’s yes is the start date, and it can fall later than the report.Georgia Rule 160-4-7-.06(13)(a) |
| District answers the state | 10 business days | Georgia’s division asks the district in writing, and the count runs from that written request.Georgia Rule 160-4-7-.12(1)(g)4. |
| GaDOE’s written findings | 60 calendar days | Counted from GaDOE’s own receipt, so a district’s late answer inside it does not move the date.Georgia Rule 160-4-7-.12(1)(c) |
What Georgia 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 referral the rule names
- Nothing federal decides who may refer a child. Georgia’s evaluation rule names the parent beside the SST, so your letter is a referral.
- A seat at the SST
- IDEA says nothing about pre-referral teams. Georgia requires that parents be invited to all meetings of their child’s SST.
- A documented way past it
- Georgia lets school staff and a parent agree there is reasonable cause to bypass the SST process, and the record has to justify it.
If the school says no
Two things look like a refusal here: an eligibility report that says no, and a referral that draws interventions instead of consent.
- Georgia’s eligibility report explains a not-eligible finding, so read what it says about each component.
- When only interventions came back, ask for the SST documentation the rule lists: dates, the plan, its results.
- If the sixty ran out, ask the LEA to show the documented extenuating circumstance its rule allows.
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
- Georgia Rule 160-4-7-.04, evaluations and reevaluationsWhere the sixty is set.
- Georgia Rule 160-4-2-.32, the Student Support TeamThe SST, in the rule.
- GaDOE dispute resolution, complaints and mediationWhere a complaint is filed.
- The federal evaluation rule (34 CFR 300.301)The floor every state builds on.