Section 504 provides eligible students who are being recommended for long term suspension or who have a series of short team suspensions which result in a change in placement, a process to determine if their suspensions are directly related to their impairment must be completed.
A change in placement occurs if a student identified as 504 is removed for more than 10 consecutive school days and/or the series of removals that exceeds 10 cumulative school days that constitute a pattern.
Pattern is determined by examining:
- the series of removals total more than ten school days in a school year; and
- the student’s behavior is substantially similar to the student’s behavior in previous incidents that resulted in the series of removals; and
- or such additional factors as the length of each removal, total amount of time the child has been removed and the proximity of the removals to one another.
Before an identified 504 student can be suspended for more than ten days (cumulative or consecutive OSS), a team with knowledge of the child must meet to determine whether behaviors resulting in suspension are related to the child’s impairment through the Manifestation Determination Review process.
