Nevada Senate Bill 354: Discipline Protections for Students with IEPs

Nevada's Senate Bill 354 fundamentally changed how public schools can discipline students with disabilities. Most parents in Clark County and Washoe County have never heard of it. The schools rarely volunteer the information. But if your child has an IEP and has ever faced a suspension, been sent home repeatedly for behavioral incidents, or received a disciplinary referral, this law directly affects what the school is allowed to do.

What Senate Bill 354 Requires

SB 354, signed into Nevada law, added new protections that layer on top of the existing federal IDEA discipline requirements. The most significant provision requires that before a student with a disability can be suspended or recommended for expulsion, the school must develop a Restorative Justice Action Plan.

A Restorative Justice Action Plan is a school-created document that outlines what the school will do to address the behavioral issue through non-punitive means before removing the student from the educational setting. The concept is rooted in the idea that behavioral incidents have underlying causes — often directly connected to the student's disability — and that removing a student from school without addressing those causes simply guarantees the behavior will recur.

This requirement does not mean your child can never be disciplined. It means the school must exhaust restorative approaches before reaching for suspension as a first response. For students with disabilities, this creates an important legal checkpoint that many Nevada districts were skipping entirely before SB 354 passed.

The Existing Federal Framework SB 354 Builds On

To understand why SB 354 matters, you need to understand the federal floor it sits on top of. Under IDEA, students with disabilities already have significant discipline protections that Nevada schools must follow.

First, a school can only suspend a student with an IEP for up to 10 school days in a school year before federal law kicks in with additional requirements. After the 10th cumulative day of suspension (or for any suspension that constitutes a change of placement), the district must convene a Manifestation Determination Review (MDR) within 10 school days.

At the MDR, the IEP team — which includes parents — must answer two questions: Was the behavior caused by, or directly and substantially related to, the child's disability? Was the behavior a direct result of the district's failure to implement the IEP? If the answer to either question is yes, the behavior is considered a manifestation of the disability, and the school cannot expel or long-term suspend the student for that behavior. Instead, the team must conduct a Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) and develop or revise a Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP).

This is not a matter of district discretion. It is federal law.

Where Nevada Schools Frequently Violate These Rules

Despite the clear federal framework, Nevada districts — particularly given the systemic understaffing in CCSD and WCSD — regularly violate discipline protections in several ways:

Informal removals. Parents report being called to pick their children up repeatedly, told to "take a few days off," or that the school "strongly recommends" the child stay home for a few days. These informal removals often are not counted as official suspensions. But if the effect is the same — the child is excluded from school — federal law considers them suspensions and they count toward the 10-day limit.

Failing to convene the MDR. Even when formal suspensions accumulate past 10 days, some Nevada schools fail to schedule the Manifestation Determination Review at all, or schedule it after the 10-day deadline has passed. This is a procedural violation that can be addressed through a state complaint.

Predetermining the MDR outcome. Some districts arrive at MDR meetings with the determination already made. Parents report being told their child's behavior "had nothing to do with their disability" without any meaningful analysis, despite clear evidence in the IEP documents linking the behavioral issue to the disability category.

Ignoring the BIP requirement. Even when a manifestation is found, some districts fail to develop a Functional Behavioral Assessment or revise the Behavior Intervention Plan, effectively leaving the underlying issue unaddressed and setting the student up for future disciplinary incidents.

Restorative Justice in Practice

Under SB 354, if a school wants to pursue disciplinary action against a student with a disability, the restorative justice component must come first. In practice, restorative approaches might include:

• Peer mediation or conflict resolution circles for incidents involving interpersonal conflict
• A meeting with the student, family, and school staff to identify what triggered the behavior
• Environmental modifications (seating changes, sensory breaks, reduced stimulation in the classroom)
• Check-in/check-out systems that provide the student with structured daily support
• Restorative conversations that address the harm caused by the behavior without removal from school

The school should be documenting these efforts before they move to suspension. If a school suspends your child and you see no evidence of a Restorative Justice Action Plan in the documentation, the school may have failed to comply with SB 354.

What You Can Do Right Now

If your child has an IEP and behavioral challenges are part of the picture, take these steps before the next incident:

Request the current BIP. If your child has behavioral goals in the IEP, there should be a Behavior Intervention Plan. Ask for a copy. If one does not exist, request one in writing — the district must respond.

Count the suspension days. Keep your own log of every day your child has been removed from school, whether officially or informally. If you are approaching 10 days, the clock is ticking.

Ask about the FBA. A Functional Behavioral Assessment is the analytical foundation for a good Behavior Intervention Plan. If the existing BIP is based on vague observations rather than systematic data collection, request an updated FBA.

Document every informal removal. Every time the school calls you to pick your child up early for behavioral reasons, send a follow-up email confirming the date, time, and the reason given. This creates a record if you later need to prove that informal removals accumulated past the 10-day limit.

If you need to challenge a disciplinary decision — whether at the MDR stage, through a state complaint, or by filing with the Office for Civil Rights — you need documentation and a clear understanding of the timeline. The Nevada IEP & 504 Blueprint walks through the discipline process step by step, including scripts for MDR meetings and the state complaint process when districts fail to follow SB 354 and IDEA requirements. Get the complete guide here.

The Broader Pattern

Nevada's discipline data for students with disabilities mirrors a national trend: students with IEPs are suspended and expelled at significantly higher rates than their non-disabled peers, even when the behavior is directly caused by the disability. SB 354 and the federal IDEA framework together create a legal wall against this pattern — but only if parents know the wall exists and know how to invoke it.

The school district is not required to hand you a copy of SB 354 when they call to tell you your child has been suspended. They are required to provide you with Procedural Safeguards, but many Nevada parents receive that document and set it aside without reading it. The Manifestation Determination process, the FBA requirement, and Nevada's restorative justice mandate are all in that document — buried in dense legal language that few families have time to decode.

Knowing this framework before an incident happens is the difference between accepting a 10-day suspension as inevitable and knowing that the district had a legal obligation to try something else first.

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