Pupil appraisal, the SBLC and 60 business days: how Louisiana starts an IEP
Louisiana routes referrals to pupil appraisal through the School Building Level Committee, but your written request is owed an answer in 10 business days. Once you sign consent, pupil appraisal has 60 business days to finish, and the report reaching the special education administrator opens 30 calendar days for the IEP. 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 Louisiana
Where the request lands
Address your letter to the principal, because no SBLC referral reaches pupil appraisal without that signature on it.
What comes back
Either a consent form to sign, or a written refusal you can quote later; a hallway promise leaves nothing to appeal.
Sign, and summer counts
Your signature opens the 60 business days, and with your permission the district parks that count from June to September.
Take the integrated report home
Louisiana’s integrated report carries any dissenting opinion, and its findings must be explained out loud on request, before the IEP meeting.
The evaluation request letter writes step one for you, in the words a district answers.
LDOE Special Education Ombudsman — Confidential and neutral, it answers non-legal questions from parents, and reaching it needs no paperwork.
What qualifies a child in Louisiana
Louisiana calls it an exceptionality, and the SBLC documents three findings before referring, though a suspected severe or low-incidence impairment can be referred at once.
- Graphed evidence that your child’s rate of progress trailed classmates through the tiers.
- Documentation ruling out weak instruction, limited English proficiency or economic disadvantage as the cause.
- A suspected exceptionality, a word Louisiana stretches past disability to gifted and talented students.
What the rule says
The state wrote it this way:
“Special education and related services referrals and evaluations should not be delayed or denied based solely on the required movement through tiered intervention prior to referral.”
Bulletin 1508, LAC 28:CI.301(B)
Louisiana teams still say to finish the tiers first, and this line is what you name when they do.
The deadlines Louisiana 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Your letter gets an answer | 10 business days | They start at the district’s receipt and skip weekends, because Louisiana counts business days here.Bulletin 1706, §301.A.4 |
| Testing through the written report | 60 business days | It runs from the consent you signed, in business days, and both of the extensions need your agreement.Bulletin 1508, §511.A |
| An outside evaluation at public expense | 15 business days | Disagreeing with the district’s testing is what earns it, and public money covers one outside evaluation each time.Bulletin 1706, §503.B |
| The draft IEP you ask for | 3 business days | Requesting it is what starts this one, and the three days run backward off the meeting.Bulletin 1706, §322.F |
| IEP and placement document | 30 calendar days | It opens when pupil appraisal hands the report to the special education administrator, not when you receive it.Bulletin 1530, §105.A |
| Services actually begin | 10 school days | Development of the IEP starts the count, so ask which day each service was first delivered.Bulletin 1706, §323.C.2 |
| Early resolution period | 15 calendar days | Filing with your district’s representative opens it, and the state stays out of that fifteen.Bulletin 1706, §151.C.3 |
What Louisiana 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.
- Gifted counts as exceptional
- IDEA never reaches giftedness. Louisiana’s exceptionality list does, so a gifted child here carries an IEP and the services written on it.
- A deadline on the second opinion
- Louisiana puts 15 business days on a request for an independent evaluation: fund it or file for a hearing, where federal law sets no clock.
- A neutral in the room
- The department will send a trained neutral to sit in on your IEP meeting, at no cost to either side, when both agree.
If the school says no
Here the refusal is often no answer at all, and ten business days is the point where that becomes a date you can cite.
- Ask the SBLC for its file: the intervention graphs, the dates, and the decision it recorded.
- Your district’s early resolution representative takes an informal complaint, and a written agreement out of it is enforceable in court.
- A formal complaint goes to the department itself, which runs an independent investigation and decides without the district’s agreement.
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
- Bulletin 1508, Louisiana’s Pupil Appraisal HandbookThe SBLC and the evaluation.
- Bulletin 1706, the state special education regulationsConsent, notice, complaints.
- Bulletin 1530, Louisiana’s IEP HandbookWhat follows the evaluation.
- The federal evaluation rule (34 CFR 300.301)The floor every state builds on.