Extended School Year DC: How to Get ESY Services from DCPS or Your Charter School

Every spring, parents of children with IEPs face the same question: will the school provide services over the summer, or will months of progress disappear? In DC, this is not a discretionary benefit the school can offer as a kindness—it is a mandatory part of FAPE for students who qualify. But qualifying requires data, and getting that data in front of the IEP team before the April deadline is entirely the parent's problem to manage.

What ESY Is and What It Is Not

Extended School Year (ESY) services are special education and related services provided beyond the regular school calendar. OSSE's ESY policy is explicit: ESY is not summer school, not enrichment, and not a babysitting substitute. It exists solely to provide FAPE to students whose disabilities cause them to lose critical skills during breaks in service that cannot be recouped in a reasonable time.

The legal standard—set by federal case law and implemented in DC through OSSE policy—centers on whether the benefits a student gained during the regular school year would be "significantly jeopardized" by a break in services. Two factors drive the analysis:

1. Regression: The degree of skill loss the student experiences during the break (summer, winter, or spring recess).
2. Recoupment: The time required after the break to return to baseline—the skill level the student had when instruction stopped.

If a student regresses substantially and takes an unusually long time to recover, ESY is required. The analysis must focus on "critical skills"—not every IEP goal, but the skills most foundational to the student's educational progress.

What Data DC Requires for an ESY Determination

OSSE's 2025 ESY Preparation Guide specifies that IEP teams must rely on at least three months of progress monitoring data to make an ESY determination. This data typically comes from:

• Formal progress reports issued on the quarterly schedule
• Teacher data logs tracking specific IEP goal performance
• Benchmark assessments (MAP, ANET, i-Ready)
• Documentation of regression after previous breaks (winter recess data is especially relevant)

Parents who have observed significant regression at home—increased anxiety, loss of reading fluency, behavioral escalation—should document that in writing and share it with the IEP team. Parent observation is a legitimate data source under IDEA, and if the school's data shows modest regression but the parent's documentation shows significant real-world impact, the team is required to reconcile those accounts.

The April Deadline Problem

DC LEAs face strict logistics deadlines in April and May to finalize ESY placements, arrange staffing, and coordinate specialized transportation with OSSE's Division of Student Transportation (OSSE DOT). In practice, this means:

• ESY eligibility discussions should happen at the spring IEP meeting, no later than April.
• If the spring IEP meeting is scheduled for May or June, you are at high risk of missing the transportation and placement logistics window.
• You can request a standalone ESY meeting before the annual review if your child's situation warrants early consideration.

If the school tells you ESY discussions will happen "at the annual review in June," push back. Request a specific ESY determination meeting in March or April, citing the OSSE ESY Preparation Guide and the transportation coordination deadlines. Put this request in writing.

How to Request ESY if the School Hasn't Raised It

Schools are supposed to initiate ESY discussions. Many do not, especially at schools with limited summer programming infrastructure. If the school has not raised ESY and your child has had a difficult year with documented skill regression, you have two options:

Option 1: Request an IEP meeting specifically to discuss ESY eligibility. Submit this request in writing, citing IDEA's FAPE requirement and the LEA's obligation to consider ESY. Include your own data: teacher emails noting regression, home observation logs, comparison of skill levels in September versus December after the prior winter break.

Option 2: Address ESY directly at the annual review. Come prepared with the regression and recoupment data, a written summary of your observations, and a proposed ESY program. If the team refuses to consider ESY or denies it without an individualized data analysis, request a Prior Written Notice explaining the basis for the denial—including what data the team relied on and what options were considered and rejected.

ESY Transportation in DC

A frequently overlooked problem: even if the IEP team approves ESY, getting the child to the program depends on OSSE DOT, which manages specialized transportation for the entire DC public school system. OSSE DOT's history of transportation failures is well documented—a class-action lawsuit was filed against OSSE in 2024 by Advocates for Justice and Education over chronic busing delays and unsafe conditions.

If transportation is on your child's IEP as a related service, it must be provided for ESY as well. If OSSE DOT cannot provide reliable transportation for the ESY program, you may be entitled to:

• A transportation stipend (OSSE's Parent Stipend Program, currently approximately $400/month) for self-transport
• Compensatory services for any ESY sessions missed due to transportation failures, logged and documented using the same standards that apply during the regular school year

Document every missed session. Date, time, reason given by the school or transportation provider. This documentation becomes the basis for a compensatory education claim if the transportation failures are systematic.

ESY in the Charter Sector

Independent charter LEAs are responsible for arranging and funding ESY for their enrolled students, just as DCPS is for its students. However, many charter networks lack summer programming infrastructure. If your charter cannot provide ESY internally, it is obligated to contract or place the student in an appropriate external program at the charter's expense.

"We don't have a summer program" is not a legal basis for denying ESY. If a charter refuses ESY services it is required to provide, file an OSSE State Complaint. The complaint process is free, resolves within 60 days, and results in a binding Corrective Action Plan if OSSE finds noncompliance.

What to Do If ESY Is Denied

If the IEP team denies ESY, get the decision in writing via a Prior Written Notice. The PWN must explain:

• What action the school is refusing (denying ESY)
• Why (the data and reasoning behind the determination)
• What data the team used
• What alternatives the team considered

Review the PWN carefully. If the team's reasoning is that no regression data exists, but you know data exists (or should exist from progress monitoring), challenge it in writing. If the school cannot produce three months of progress monitoring data, that is itself a compliance problem separate from the ESY determination.

For ESY disputes that cannot be resolved through a State Complaint, due process is available. The OSSE State Complaint vs. due process comparison for DC explains when to escalate and what timeline each pathway involves.

If you are building an ESY request and want templates for the data request letter and the ESY meeting demand, the District of Columbia IEP & 504 Advocacy Playbook includes those tools, along with a compensatory education tracker designed around DC's Reid standard for summer service gaps.

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