A district proposes moving your child to a different program, you disagree, and the move is scheduled for Monday. Federal law holds your child's current placement in place while the dispute runs its course.
The team meeting ends with the district proposing to move your child from the general education classroom with support into a self-contained setting across town. You say you disagree and you intend to file. Someone tells you the transfer paperwork is already moving and the new placement starts after the break.
Federal law answers that timing question directly, and the answer is the single most useful thing a family can know before filing anything.
Under 34 C.F.R. § 300.518(a), during the pendency of any administrative or judicial proceeding regarding a due process complaint notice requesting a hearing under § 300.507, your child must remain in his or her current educational placement, unless the state or local agency and you agree otherwise. Advocates call this stay put, and it operates for the whole life of the proceeding rather than only until the first hearing date.
Except as provided in § 300.533, during the pendency of any administrative or judicial proceeding regarding a due process complaint notice requesting a due process hearing under § 300.507, unless the State or local agency and the parents of the child agree otherwise, the child involved in the complaint must remain in his or her current educational placement.
34 C.F.R. § 300.518(a)
Two features of that sentence carry the weight. The protection attaches to a due process complaint, so it starts when you file rather than when you object in a meeting, and the only route around it, apart from the discipline exception below, runs through your own agreement.
Without stay put, a district could carry out a contested move first and let the family litigate afterward, so whatever a hearing officer decided months later would land on a child who had already changed schools, lost a teacher, and settled in.
Stay put removes that leverage, because a district that wants a placement change during a dispute has to persuade you rather than schedule around you. The protection is neutral in design, so it holds a placement you like in place just as firmly as it holds one you are trying to leave, which is worth thinking through before you file.
The regulation does not define current educational placement here, and disputes over what the phrase covers do arise, so your state's procedural safeguards notice and a special education attorney can tell you how your state applies it. Getting the district's proposal in writing as Prior Written Notice under 34 C.F.R. § 300.503 establishes what the district proposed and when.
Section 300.518(b) covers the situation where no current placement exists yet. If the complaint involves an application for initial admission to public school, the child, with your consent, must be placed in the public school until all the proceedings finish. Your consent is part of the rule, so the district cannot place the child over your objection under this paragraph.
Section 300.518(c) handles the transition from early intervention. A child who has been receiving Part C services, has turned three, and is no longer eligible for Part C is not entitled to keep receiving those Part C services from the public agency. When the complaint involves an application for initial services under Part B, and the agency finds the child eligible for special education and related services, and you consent to the initial provision of those services under § 300.300(b), the agency must provide the special education and related services that are not in dispute between you and the agency.
That last clause repays close reading. The services you and the district agree on start while you continue to argue about the rest, so a disagreement over one piece of the offer does not leave a three year old sitting at home with nothing.
Section 300.518(d) contains the first, a provision families rarely hear about. If a hearing officer in a due process hearing conducted by the state educational agency, or a state review official in an administrative appeal, agrees with you that a change of placement is appropriate, that placement must be treated as an agreement between the state and you for purposes of paragraph (a).
The practical effect is that a favorable decision resets what stay put protects. If the district appeals, your child stays in the placement the hearing officer found appropriate rather than returning to the setting you challenged, because the decision now functions as the agreement the regulation requires.
The second situation is discipline. Section 300.518(a) opens with an exception for § 300.533, and that exception matters in any case that begins with a removal. When a parent appeals a disciplinary removal or a manifestation determination under § 300.532, the child remains in the interim alternative educational setting the IEP team selected, under § 300.533, rather than returning to the previous placement while the appeal proceeds. Another post in this series covers placement during a disciplinary appeal in detail.
Stay put is not a decision about whether the district's proposal is right, and it is not a freeze on everything. The IEP team can still meet, services can still change by agreement, and the case still has to be won on its substance.
It is also not protection for an objection you never put in writing. The protection attaches to a filed due process complaint, so a family who wants it must file rather than keep negotiating past the transfer date. This post is general information rather than legal advice, and a special education attorney or your state's Parent Training and Information Center can advise you on whether and when to file in your situation.
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Assistance to States for the Education of Children With Disabilities, 34 C.F.R. § 300.300 (2017).
Assistance to States for the Education of Children With Disabilities, 34 C.F.R. § 300.503 (2017).
Assistance to States for the Education of Children With Disabilities, 34 C.F.R. § 300.507 (2017).
Assistance to States for the Education of Children With Disabilities, 34 C.F.R. § 300.518 (2017).
Assistance to States for the Education of Children With Disabilities, 34 C.F.R. § 300.532 (2017).
Assistance to States for the Education of Children With Disabilities, 34 C.F.R. § 300.533 (2017).
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq. (2004).
Keep reading
Families often decide a due process case is impossible because they cannot afford an attorney. Federal law lets a court order a district to pay a prevailing parent's reasonable attorneys' fees, and it sets limits that run in both directions.
A family that disagrees with a hearing decision can file in state or federal court, and the filing window is short. Knowing what the court does differently, and what the deadline is in your state, matters before the decision ever arrives.
Federal law puts a 45-day limit on reaching a hearing decision and requires the hearing to happen at a time and place reasonably convenient to you and your child. Both rules exist so a dispute about this school year gets decided during this school year.