Extended School Year and Compensatory Education in Georgia: What Parents Need to Know

Two of the most misunderstood provisions in Georgia special education law involve what happens outside the regular school year. Extended School Year (ESY) is a service students with IEPs may be entitled to during summer and other extended breaks. Compensatory education is a remedy for past educational harm when the school has failed to deliver required services. Both are regularly denied by districts, often because parents don't know to ask — or because they accept vague answers that don't hold up legally.

Extended School Year (ESY) in Georgia

What ESY Is — and Isn't

ESY is not summer school. Summer school is a general enrichment or remediation program open to any student. ESY is individualized special education programming designed specifically to prevent a student with a disability from losing critical skills during an extended break from school.

Under Georgia Rule 160-4-7-.02, ESY must be considered annually for every student with an IEP. The IEP team cannot simply skip this consideration — it is a required part of the annual IEP development process.

ESY can be provided during the summer, but it can also apply to other extended breaks — winter break, spring break, or any other extended period where a student's IEP team has determined that a break in services would cause significant regression.

Who Qualifies for ESY

The standard in Georgia is not that a student "might benefit" from continued services. ESY eligibility requires evidence that without it, the student would likely regress in critical skills to the point where it would take significantly longer to recoup those skills than the regression itself — a standard often called the "regression/recoupment" analysis.

The IEP team considers multiple factors:

• Regression and recoupment rates: Does the student lose skills over breaks, and how long does it take to get back to where they were?
• Severity of the disability: Students with more significant disabilities affecting self-sufficiency or critical life skills are more likely to qualify
• Transitional needs: Students at critical transition points (entering middle school, approaching adulthood, developing foundational communication skills) may have heightened ESY needs
• Nature of the skill: If the skill being developed is critical to the student's ability to benefit from special education in the long run (such as basic communication for a nonverbal student), regression is more serious

The team should be looking at data — previous years' regression patterns, progress monitoring scores before and after breaks — not just making assumptions.

How to Request ESY

ESY is supposed to be raised by the IEP team at the annual IEP meeting. If the team doesn't bring it up, you should. Request in writing that ESY eligibility be discussed and documented in the IEP.

If the team determines your child does not qualify, they must provide Prior Written Notice explaining why ESY was denied and what data they used. A denial without supporting data — or a denial based on "we don't have summer programs" rather than on your child's specific regression and recoupment data — is challengeable.

"We don't have ESY available at this school" is not a legally valid reason to deny ESY. The district's staffing constraints are not your child's problem. If ESY is required, the district must provide it even if it means contracting outside services.

What ESY Services Look Like

ESY services are individually designed for each student based on their IEP goals. A student who is working on maintaining reading fluency gains made during the school year might receive targeted reading intervention a few days per week over the summer. A student with significant communication delays might receive speech therapy sessions. The scope is determined by what regression is most at risk, not by what is convenient for the district.

ESY services are typically provided for fewer hours than the regular school year program — the goal is maintenance and prevention of regression, not accelerated learning.

Compensatory Education in Georgia

What Compensatory Education Is

Compensatory education is a legal remedy — it's what a student is entitled to receive when the district failed to provide services that were required under the IEP. It's backward-looking: it compensates for past failures, rather than just correcting them going forward.

If your child was supposed to receive 60 minutes per week of speech therapy and received 20 minutes per week for six months, compensatory education means the district owes your child services to make up for that gap. The calculation isn't necessarily a direct hour-for-hour replacement — the standard is restoring the student to the position they would have been in had the services been provided — but documented missed services create a strong foundation for a compensatory education claim.

How to Pursue Compensatory Education

Compensatory education is ordered through the formal dispute resolution process — either through a successful state complaint finding or through a due process hearing.

Via Formal State Complaint: If you file a formal state complaint with GaDOE and GaDOE finds that the district failed to implement the IEP, it can order compensatory services as part of its corrective action. This is the lower-cost, faster route — state complaints must be investigated within 60 days, and no attorney is required.

Via Due Process: A due process hearing before an OSAH Administrative Law Judge can result in an order of compensatory education. ALJs have the authority to award compensatory services based on the educational harm caused by the district's failures. Due process is more powerful but significantly more resource-intensive.

Building the Case for Compensatory Education

The strength of a compensatory education claim depends almost entirely on documentation. You need:

• Records showing what services were required in the IEP (specific minutes, frequency, and type)
• Evidence of what services were actually delivered (service logs, attendance records, teacher confirmations)
• Evidence connecting the service gap to educational harm (regression data, assessment scores, teacher observations)

Request service delivery logs directly from the district. Under IDEA, you have the right to access your child's educational records. If the logs show services were skipped, that's your evidence.

The Connection Between ESY and Compensatory Education

These two issues often come up together. A district that skipped ESY when the student was entitled to it has potentially caused compensable harm — the student regressed over summer, lost ground, and had to spend weeks of the next school year recouping skills instead of building on them. That harm is compensable.

If your child was denied ESY without proper documentation of the eligibility decision, and you can show regression occurred, that is a valid basis for a compensatory education claim.

The Georgia IEP & 504 Advocacy Playbook covers both ESY requests and compensatory education claims in detail, including how to document the case and what to include in your formal written requests to the district and to GaDOE.

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