Behavior Intervention Plans and PBIS in North Dakota: What Your Child's IEP Should Include

If your child's IEP meeting keeps circling back to behavior — suspensions, office referrals, time-outs, restraints — and the school's response has been more discipline rather than more support, something is wrong with the approach. IDEA requires that when behavior impedes a child's learning or the learning of others, the IEP team must address it proactively. In North Dakota, that means understanding how Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) fits into the picture and when a formal Behavior Intervention Plan must be part of your child's IEP.

What PBIS Is and How North Dakota Uses It

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports is a tiered prevention framework adopted by North Dakota schools under the NDMTSS (Multi-Tier System of Supports) umbrella. At its core, PBIS is a whole-school approach to preventing behavior problems before they escalate — teaching expected behaviors explicitly, using positive reinforcement, and collecting data to determine where more intensive support is needed.

North Dakota's NDDPI has supported PBIS implementation across the state, and many districts have formally adopted the framework at the Tier 1 (universal), Tier 2 (targeted group), and Tier 3 (intensive individual) levels. The North Dakota Protection and Advocacy Project has published fact sheets specifically on PBIS in the context of restraint and seclusion, noting that a well-implemented PBIS framework reduces — and should eventually eliminate — the need for physical intervention with students.

For parents, PBIS matters because it is the framework your child's school should be operating within when addressing behavioral needs. If the school's response to your child's behavior is purely reactive — suspending, restraining, or isolating — without documented positive support strategies in place, that is a gap worth naming in writing.

When a Behavior Intervention Plan Is Required

A Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) is a formal, written document created as part of the IEP process. It is not the same as a general classroom management plan. A BIP is individualized to your child, based on data from a Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA), and it describes specific strategies the school will use to teach replacement behaviors and reduce challenging behaviors.

Under IDEA as implemented in North Dakota, there are two situations where a BIP is clearly required:

First, when a Manifestation Determination Review finds that a student's behavior is a manifestation of their disability. At that point, the district must conduct or review an FBA and implement a BIP — this is not optional.

Second, when the IEP team determines that behavior impedes the child's learning or the learning of others, the team must "consider the use of positive behavioral interventions and supports, and other strategies, to address that behavior." In practice, if your child's IEP already identifies behavior as an area of concern and there is no BIP, that consideration step has either been skipped or inadequately documented.

Even outside these formal triggers, if your child is receiving a high frequency of short removals from class, physical restraints, or seclusion, the Protection and Advocacy Project of North Dakota has documented that these practices are associated with the absence of adequate behavioral support plans — and their use without an individualized behavioral support plan in place may constitute a denial of FAPE.

What a BIP Should Actually Contain

A legitimate, functional BIP is specific and data-driven. It should include:

• A clear description of the target behavior, defined in observable and measurable terms
• A summary of the FBA findings — the hypothesized function of the behavior (what the child is trying to communicate or avoid)
• Antecedent strategies that modify the environment to reduce triggers
• Teaching strategies that build a functionally equivalent replacement behavior
• Consequence strategies that reinforce the replacement behavior and minimize reinforcement of the problem behavior
• A data collection plan for monitoring whether the plan is working
• Assigned staff responsibilities for each strategy

If you receive a BIP from your child's school that consists of generic phrases like "redirect the student" or "provide breaks when needed," that is not a function-based BIP. It is a behavior management list. A true BIP flows directly from FBA data and is specific to your child's function-based profile.

Requesting an FBA and BIP

You can request a Functional Behavioral Assessment in writing at any time. Address the request to the building principal and special education coordinator. State that you are requesting an FBA under IDEA to assess the behavioral needs affecting your child's access to education, and that you are requesting a BIP be developed based on those findings.

The school cannot charge you for this assessment. If you disagree with the school's FBA — if you believe it was conducted inadequately or that the hypothesized function is incorrect — you have the same right to an Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE) of the behavioral assessment at public expense as you do for any other evaluation.

Once an FBA is completed and a BIP developed, the BIP becomes part of the IEP and is subject to the same legal requirements: the school must implement it as written, and if it is not working, the team must meet to revise it. A BIP that exists on paper but is not being followed is an IEP implementation failure — which you can document and escalate through the state complaint process.

The Caseload Problem and Behavioral Support

North Dakota's special education teacher shortage creates a specific problem for behavioral support: the staff most qualified to implement individualized behavior plans — special education teachers and behavioral interventionists — are in short supply, particularly in rural areas. More than half of North Dakota public school administrators report it is very difficult or impossible to fill special education teaching positions.

This shortage does not reduce the legal obligation to provide behavioral support as written in the IEP. When a district claims it cannot implement a behavioral support strategy because of staffing, that claim needs to be examined carefully. Staffing limitations are a compliance problem for the district to solve, not a justification for reducing or eliminating the services your child is entitled to.

If your child's behavioral needs are not being addressed through the IEP, or if the school is responding to behavior with discipline rather than support, the North Dakota IEP & 504 Blueprint includes specific guidance on requesting FBAs, challenging inadequate BIPs, and documenting disciplinary patterns that may constitute a denial of FAPE.

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