Stay Put Rights in New Hampshire: How to Protect Your Child's Placement During a Dispute

You received a Written Prior Notice from your child's school district proposing to change your child's placement — moving them from a specialized program to a general education classroom, pulling a 1:1 paraprofessional, or reducing services in ways you believe will harm your child. You disagreed. You told the district you disagree. And now they are telling you the change is happening anyway.

This is exactly the situation stay put rights exist to prevent.

Stay put — also called the "pendency" provision — is one of the most powerful procedural protections in IDEA and in New Hampshire's special education law. When properly invoked, it freezes your child's educational placement in place while a dispute is pending. The district cannot make the proposed change without your agreement, or without a final administrative or judicial decision authorizing it.

Understanding how to invoke this right, where it applies, and where it does not is one of the most practically useful things a New Hampshire parent can know.

What Stay Put Is

Stay put comes from Section 1415(j) of IDEA: "during the pendency of any proceedings conducted pursuant to this section, unless the State or local educational agency and the parents otherwise agree, the child shall remain in the then-current educational placement."

"Then-current educational placement" means the placement established by the most recently agreed-upon IEP. That is the baseline. It is locked in place from the moment a dispute is formally pending.

"Proceedings" refers to due process hearings, state complaints, mediation, and the appeals processes that follow. In New Hampshire, the Neutral Conference under RSA 186-C:23-b also constitutes a pending proceeding for these purposes.

The critical point: stay put is triggered the moment you file for one of these proceedings, or in some circumstances the moment you provide notice of disagreement. You do not need to win the dispute for stay put to protect your child. The protection runs for the entire duration of the proceedings — which can take months, and sometimes over a year.

How to Invoke Stay Put in New Hampshire

Stay put does not activate automatically the moment you tell the district you disagree at an IEP meeting. It attaches to a formal pending proceeding. The sequence matters:

Step 1: Receive and object to the Written Prior Notice. When the district proposes a change, they are required under Ed 1120 to issue a Written Prior Notice at least 14 calendar days before the proposed change. When you receive it, respond in writing that you disagree with the proposed change and intend to exercise your dispute resolution rights.

Step 2: File a formal proceeding. File a state complaint with the NHDOE Bureau of Special Education Support, request a Neutral Conference under RSA 186-C:23-b, or file a due process complaint with the NHDOE Dispute Resolution Office. The moment any of these is filed and acknowledged, the stay put provision is in effect.

Step 3: Notify the district in writing. Send a written communication to the special education director and the superintendent stating that you have filed [the proceeding] and that pursuant to IDEA Section 1415(j) and New Hampshire RSA 186-C, your child's placement must remain in the then-current IEP placement pending resolution. Cite the specific IEP date that constitutes the current agreed-upon placement.

Once stay put is in effect, the district has no unilateral authority to change the placement. If the district proceeds with the change anyway, that is a violation — grounds for an immediate emergency request to a hearing officer for a temporary restraining order, and strong additional evidence for your underlying dispute.

What "Current Placement" Means in Practice

The most contested aspect of stay put in New Hampshire is often what "current educational placement" actually means. A few scenarios:

The IEP team proposes service reductions at an annual review. You attend the annual IEP meeting, the team proposes reducing speech therapy from 60 minutes per week to 30 minutes per week, and you do not consent to the new IEP. The previous IEP — with 60 minutes of speech therapy — remains the "then-current educational placement." The district must continue providing 60 minutes until the dispute is resolved.

The district's program has changed but your IEP has not been revised. If your child's IEP specifies a particular program or setting, and the district has modified that program internally without convening the IEP team or issuing a Written Prior Notice, that is itself a violation. The IEP as written is the baseline.

You placed your child in a private program unilaterally. This is where stay put gets complicated. If you disagreed with the district's proposed placement and placed your child privately without the district's agreement, the private placement is not necessarily the "current educational placement" under stay put. The last agreed-upon placement — typically the last IEP both parties signed — is the baseline. This is one of several reasons why unilateral placements require careful legal strategy and, usually, an attorney.

The district's contract with an out-of-district program expires. If your child is in an approved out-of-district placement and the district claims it can move them because the contract has ended or the program has changed, stay put still applies to the placement — the district must arrange continued placement in a comparable setting, or the current placement continues.

Exceptions to Stay Put

Stay put is powerful but not absolute. New Hampshire law and IDEA recognize two categories of situations where the district can override it:

The "special circumstances" disciplinary exception. If your child brings a weapon to school, is involved in drug offenses, or inflicts serious bodily injury on a school employee or another student, federal law allows the district to unilaterally move the child to an Interim Alternative Educational Setting (IAES) for up to 45 school days — even if stay put would otherwise apply. However, even in these situations, the child must continue to receive services that allow them to participate in the general curriculum and progress toward their IEP goals.

Mutual agreement. If you and the district agree on a new placement, even temporarily, that agreement can supersede the stay put baseline. Be extremely careful about informal agreements at IEP meetings, verbal commitments from administrators, or "trial period" arrangements the district proposes. If you agree to a temporary change and it becomes the new status quo, it may be treated as the new "current placement." Any agreement about placement should be documented in writing, time-limited, and explicitly state that it does not modify the IEP or constitute consent to a new placement.

The district seeks and obtains emergency injunctive relief. If the district believes a child poses a substantial risk of harm to themselves or others, they can seek an emergency order from a hearing officer authorizing a temporary placement change. This is rare and requires a formal proceeding.

Stay Put and the Neutral Conference

New Hampshire's Neutral Conference under RSA 186-C:23-b is available as an alternative to due process, and it is faster — completed in a single day, with a written opinion issued within 48 hours. Filing for a Neutral Conference triggers the pendency provision.

The Neutral Conference has a strategic advantage in stay put situations: because it is fast and non-binding, it can give you a neutral assessment of whether your stay put position is defensible — without burning months in due process. If the neutral evaluator agrees that the district's proposed change is not legally supportable, the district has strong incentive to settle rather than face a due process hearing where they bear the burden of proof under New Hampshire's HB 581.

What to Do If the District Violates Stay Put

If the district changes your child's placement after a proceeding is pending — removes the paraprofessional, transfers your child to a different classroom, reduces services — that is a stay put violation. Act immediately:

1. Document the violation in writing. Note the date, what changed, and who communicated the change.
2. Send a written demand to the special education director citing IDEA Section 1415(j) and demanding that the prior placement be restored immediately.
3. Contact the NHDOE Bureau of Special Education Support to report the violation. A stay put violation may be the basis for an emergency state complaint.
4. Consult a New Hampshire special education attorney. Stay put violations are among the strongest positions a parent can hold in a due process proceeding — a district that disregards the pendency provision has demonstrated exactly the kind of bad faith that reinforces a claim for compensatory education.

Using Stay Put Strategically

Stay put is not just a defensive tool. In New Hampshire, where the district bears the burden of proof at due process hearings under HB 581, a parent who has invoked stay put and waited out a proceeding is in a stronger position than most realize. The district must affirmatively prove that its proposed new placement is appropriate — not just assert it. If the district cannot mount that defense, the current placement continues by default.

This means that filing a proceeding, invoking stay put, and then building your documentation case during the proceeding period is a legitimate and effective strategy. You are not required to act urgently. The pendency provision works in your favor the longer it operates.

The New Hampshire IEP & 504 Advocacy Playbook includes a stay put invocation letter template and a WPN response framework that will walk you through the exact steps to document your objection and trigger the pendency protection before a placement change takes effect.

The Bottom Line

Stay put is one of the most underused rights in special education because parents do not know it exists until after the placement has already changed. The protection only works if you invoke it before the district acts. The moment you receive a Written Prior Notice proposing a change you disagree with, start the clock — respond in writing, file a proceeding, and put the district on notice that the current placement is frozen.

New Hampshire's strong procedural framework, including the 14-day WPN requirement under Ed 1120 and the burden-of-proof shift under HB 581, gives parents real leverage when a placement dispute is handled correctly from the start. Stay put is the foundation that makes everything else possible.

See more United States homeschool guides →