Truancy Charges and Soft Suspensions in Kansas Special Education: Know Your Rights

The call comes midmorning: "Your child is having a difficult day. We think it's best if you come pick them up." You pick your child up. This happens eight times over two months. Then, without warning, the district files truancy charges — citing the same absences you were asked to create.

This is not an isolated experience in Kansas. It is a documented pattern in underfunded districts, particularly those serving students with complex emotional and behavioral profiles. Here is what soft suspensions are, why they are illegal, and what you can do to stop them.

What Is a Soft Suspension?

A soft suspension — also called an informal removal or undocumented removal — occurs when a school sends a student with a disability home without formally recording the removal as a suspension. Common forms include:

• Phone calls asking parents to pick up the child due to "behavioral issues" or "staffing problems"
• Sending the student to the nurse's office until a parent arrives
• Placing the student in an unsupervised or unstaffed space for an extended period to "calm down" — then calling for pickup
• Releasing the child early "for their own safety" without documenting the decision as a suspension
• Excluding the student from specific classes, activities, or portions of the school day without IEP team authorization

Because these removals are not recorded as formal suspensions, they do not trigger the legal protections that kick in when a student with a disability accumulates 10 or more cumulative days of suspension in a school year. The district avoids both the procedural obligations and the paper trail.

Why Soft Suspensions Are Illegal Under IDEA

Under federal law and Kansas special education regulations, a student with a disability who is removed from their educational placement triggers specific protections based on the number of cumulative days removed. When cumulative removals — whether or not formally labeled suspensions — exceed 10 school days in a year, the district is required to:

• Conduct a Manifestation Determination Review (MDR) to evaluate whether the behavior is a manifestation of the student's disability
• Ensure that a Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) has been conducted
• Consider whether the IEP and placement are appropriate

"Pattern of exclusion" analysis under IDEA looks at factors including the length of each removal, the proximity of removals to each other, and whether the student is being excluded because the school lacks the capacity to serve them. Informal removals that add up to a pattern of exclusion are treated the same as formal suspensions for purposes of IDEA rights.

Soft suspensions also raise a direct FAPE issue: if the student is being educated for fewer hours than the IEP requires because the school keeps calling parents to pick the child up, the student is not receiving the services the IEP mandates.

The Truancy Trap

Here is how the trap closes: a district sends a child home informally 15 to 20 times over the course of a year. These removals are recorded, if at all, as parent-initiated pickups. The student's attendance record shows repeated absences.

When the district then initiates truancy proceedings, it presents that attendance record as evidence that the family is failing to ensure the child's attendance. The parent's own cooperation — picking the child up when asked — becomes the documented absence record used against them.

This is one of the most cynical patterns in Kansas special education, and it disproportionately affects students with Emotional Disturbance (ED), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD), and other behavioral diagnoses.

How to Document Soft Suspensions as They Occur

You cannot fight this trap after it has closed. You have to document it as it happens.

Every time you receive a call to pick up your child, send an email within an hour. Address it to the building principal and special education coordinator. State:

• The time you received the call
• The reason given for the pickup request
• The time you arrived and picked up the child
• That you are recording this as a school-initiated removal from placement

Include: "I am documenting this removal as a school-initiated exclusion from my child's IEP-mandated educational placement pursuant to IDEA. Please confirm in writing whether this removal is being recorded as a suspension and whether my child's cumulative removal days have been tracked this year."

Track the cumulative days yourself. Keep a running log. When you approach eight cumulative days, write to the district and explicitly request:

1. Confirmation of the total cumulative removal days for the year
2. An IEP team meeting to address the pattern and evaluate whether the IEP is appropriate
3. Confirmation that an FBA will be conducted if it has not been

Request a Manifestation Determination Review. Once you have documentation of a pattern of removals, you can request an MDR yourself — you do not need to wait for the district to initiate one. The MDR team must determine whether the behavior causing the removals is a manifestation of the child's disability. In most cases involving students with Emotional Disturbance or autism, behavioral incidents are manifestations. If the MDR finds a manifestation connection, the district cannot continue to discipline the student for that behavior without addressing it through the IEP.

Responding to Truancy Charges

If the district has already filed truancy charges citing the same absences that were district-initiated removals, your documentation is your defense.

Contact Kansas Legal Services immediately. KLS provides free or low-cost civil legal assistance and can represent you in truancy proceedings. Their offices include Wichita, Kansas City, Topeka, Dodge City, Hays, and several other cities.

File a KSDE formal state complaint. Document that:

• The absences cited in the truancy complaint were school-initiated removals, not parent-initiated
• The removals were not formally recorded as suspensions despite constituting removal from educational placement
• The pattern of removals violates IDEA's requirement to maintain appropriate educational placement and conduct a manifestation determination when a pattern of exclusion emerges

File an OCR complaint. If the district is systematically using soft suspensions against students with disabilities in a discriminatory pattern, this is a Section 504 civil rights matter. The Office for Civil Rights investigates systemic discriminatory discipline practices.

Request your child's attendance and discipline records in full. Use a FERPA request and, if necessary, a Kansas Open Records Act (KORA) request to obtain all documents related to your child's attendance, discipline, and any informal removal records. The district's internal records may show the removals were tracked differently than they appear in the official attendance ledger.

Kansas Disability-Related Absence Law

Kansas law (K.S.A. 72-2281) provides that a student's absence due to a disability — including hospitalizations and medical appointments — cannot be counted as an unexcused absence for truancy purposes if the parent notifies the school. When behavioral crises related to a student's disability result in emergency mental health interventions, psychiatric hospitalizations, or crisis stabilization, those absences may fall under disability-related absence protections.

For parents navigating the intersection of special education law and truancy proceedings in Kansas, the Kansas IEP & 504 Advocacy Playbook at specialedstartguide.com/us/kansas/advocacy/ includes documentation templates for tracking informal removals, MDR demand letters, and KSDE formal complaint guides built for exactly this pattern.

Key Points

• Soft suspensions are illegal when they constitute a pattern of removal from educational placement — they carry the same IDEA protections as formal suspensions
• Document every school-initiated pickup immediately, in writing, addressed to the principal
• Track cumulative removal days and invoke MDR rights when the pattern approaches or exceeds 10 days
• If truancy charges are filed based on school-initiated absences, your documented removal log is the primary defense
• KSDE formal complaints and OCR complaints are both appropriate escalation mechanisms
• Contact Kansas Legal Services for representation in truancy proceedings involving a student with a disability

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