Montana Related Services IEP: What Your Child Is Entitled to and What to Do When the School Refuses

Related services are the supports — speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, counseling, transportation, and others — that help a child with a disability benefit from special education. In Montana, the combination of itinerant cooperative staff and rural geography creates persistent related services gaps that districts sometimes present as unavoidable. They are not.

What Related Services Are

Under IDEA and Montana ARM, related services are developmental, corrective, and other supportive services required to help a child with a disability benefit from special education. The federal definition includes:

• Speech-language pathology and audiology
• Psychological services
• Physical and occupational therapy
• Recreation, including therapeutic recreation
• Social work services in schools
• School nurse services sufficient to enable a child with a disability to attend school
• Counseling services, including rehabilitation counseling
• Orientation and mobility services
• Medical services for diagnostic and evaluation purposes
• Transportation

Related services are not a separate category from special education — they are part of FAPE. If your child's IEP specifies 45 minutes of occupational therapy per week, that mandate carries the same legal weight as any academic special education service.

How Related Services Are Funded in Montana

Montana's special education funding formula allocates 17.5 percent of state appropriations specifically to Related Services Block Grants (RSBG), distributed to cooperatives and districts to fund related services personnel. An additional 5 percent goes to cooperative administrative and travel costs — which are primarily incurred in delivering itinerant related services across rural districts.

This funding stream exists precisely because OPI and the Legislature recognize that related services delivery in rural Montana is logistically complex and expensive. The funding system does not eliminate the complexity, but it means the district has a dedicated funding source for these services. "We don't have the budget for an OT" is harder to sustain when Related Services Block Grant funds are specifically designated for that purpose.

The Core Problem: Itinerant Staff Spread Too Thin

Montana's 21 special education cooperatives pool resources from member districts to employ itinerant SLPs, OTs, physical therapists, and school psychologists who travel between schools. In practice, a single SLP may serve six to ten districts, spending one day per week at each school.

When that provider is absent, ill, or leaves the cooperative mid-year, services stop. When the cooperative is short-staffed, districts are told they're on a waitlist for services. These situations are common and they are regularly experienced by Montana families in small rural communities.

Here is what the law says about them: they are not acceptable justifications for failing to deliver IEP-mandated services. IDEA requires services to be based on individual student needs, not on cooperative staffing availability. Service decisions must reflect peer-reviewed research and individualized data — not administrative scheduling constraints.

What to Do When the School Says It Can't Provide Related Services

Step 1: Get it in writing. If the district verbally tells you that services won't be delivered because the cooperative OT is unavailable, the position is on a waitlist, or the provider left, ask for that explanation in a Prior Written Notice. Under IDEA and Montana's procedural safeguards, any change in the provision of FAPE — including a de facto reduction in services due to staffing — requires written documentation.

A district that refuses to put a service reduction in writing is a district that knows the reduction is legally indefensible.

Step 2: Request compensatory education for missed sessions. Every session that was mandated by the IEP and not delivered is a service delivery failure. The remedy is compensatory education — additional services to make up the missed time. Request in writing a specific accounting of missed sessions and a plan for how and when they will be made up.

Step 3: Demand teletherapy as an alternative. When in-person delivery is unavailable, teletherapy is a legitimate service delivery method under IDEA. The district cannot use geographic isolation as a reason to provide zero related services if a qualified provider could deliver them remotely. Request in writing that the district explore teletherapy options to maintain service delivery while an in-person provider is unavailable.

Step 4: Propose contracting with an outside provider. The district can contract with private speech or OT providers to fill gaps created by cooperative staffing shortages. This is an option you can request specifically in writing. The fact that the cooperative has a waitlist does not mean no licensed OT exists within reasonable contracting reach.

Step 5: File an OPI state complaint if the district does not act. Under ARM 10.16.3662, you can file a state complaint alleging that the district is failing to deliver mandated IEP services. Document the missed sessions with dates, the IEP pages showing the mandated minutes, and your written correspondence requesting resolution. OPI's investigation will verify the service logs against the IEP mandate.

When the District Refuses to Include Related Services in the IEP

A separate but related problem: the district evaluates your child and determines they need related services, but then declines to include them in the IEP due to staffing — or the district argues your child's needs don't rise to the level requiring a related service.

Both scenarios require a Prior Written Notice before the final IEP is issued. If you disagree with the decision not to include a recommended related service, you can:

• Request an IEE at public expense to get an independent evaluation of whether the service is necessary
• Dispute the placement at the IEP meeting and ensure your objection is documented in the meeting notes
• File a state complaint if the district failed to issue a proper PWN or failed to include a related service that evaluation data supports

A family that relocated to a rural Montana district and had their child's occupational therapy stripped from the transfer IEP without a reevaluation faces exactly this situation. The district cannot unilaterally remove a related service from a transfer IEP without conducting a proper evaluation and issuing a Prior Written Notice.

Transportation as a Related Service

Transportation is classified as a related service under IDEA and Montana MCA. If your child requires transportation to access special education services — because there is no adapted bus, because the program is in a different school, or because the child's disability makes standard transportation unsafe — the district must provide it.

Under MCA 20-7-441, 20-7-442, and ARM 10.16.3820, if the district cannot provide transportation, it must reimburse parents at the state mileage rate — 72.5 cents per mile for 2026. Parents who have been driving their children to cooperative programs, therapeutic schools, or out-of-district placements without a formal reimbursement agreement should request one immediately, in writing, and ask that it be codified in the IEP.

The Montana IEP & 504 Advocacy Playbook includes templates for requesting compensatory education for missed related services sessions, demanding teletherapy when in-person delivery fails, and filing state complaints when the district does not respond.

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