Virginia Extended School Year (ESY): How to Get It and What Schools Get Wrong

Extended School Year services are one of the most frequently misunderstood — and most frequently denied — protections in Virginia special education. Families assume it is a benefit for students with severe disabilities or a simple summer school program. School divisions treat it as an optional enrichment that only a handful of students qualify for. Both understandings are wrong.

Under Virginia regulations, the IEP team must consider ESY for every student with a disability, every year. It is not optional, and it is not the same as summer school. If your child's IEP does not contain a written statement about whether ESY was considered and why it was or was not provided, the IEP may be procedurally deficient.

What ESY Is (and What It Is Not)

Extended School Year services are specially designed instruction and related services provided beyond the standard school year — typically over the summer — for students with disabilities who meet specific criteria. ESY is not:

• Summer school for academic credit
• Enrichment programming
• A reward for behavioral progress
• Something that only applies to students with severe intellectual disabilities

ESY is a FAPE requirement for qualifying students. Denying ESY to a student who qualifies is a denial of FAPE under IDEA and 8VAC20-81.

Who Qualifies in Virginia

Virginia uses a multi-factor analysis for ESY eligibility. The primary factor is regression and recoupment — whether a student experiences significant skill regression during extended breaks from school, and whether the time required to recoup those skills after returning is excessive relative to the loss.

Other factors Virginia IEP teams may consider include:

• The degree of progress toward IEP goals
• The nature and severity of the disability
• Special circumstances (e.g., a critical period of learning)
• The student's behavioral or physical health needs during breaks

The regression/recoupment analysis requires data. Virginia regulations emphasize data-driven decision-making, which means the IEP team should be relying on objective, tracked information about what happens to your child's skills over winter and spring breaks — not on general impressions or staff opinions.

The Documentation Problem

Most families who need ESY cannot get it because the data does not exist to support the determination. Here is why: tracking skill regression over breaks requires measuring skills before and after each break, consistently, over multiple data points. Many school divisions do not do this routinely. Teachers may not conduct formal assessments at the start of each grading period to document regression.

If your child appears to lose skills over summer or school breaks but no data has been formally tracked, the IEP team may say "there's no evidence of significant regression" — because no one collected the evidence.

How to address this:

• Formally request at each IEP meeting that the team track specific skills before and after each upcoming break. Put the request in writing.
• Keep your own records at home. Note what your child can and cannot do at the end of each school year (before the break), and document the same observations before school resumes. Written notes with dates from a parent are not as strong as professional assessments, but they are better than nothing.
• Ask for a formal assessment at the start of the school year specifically to document any regression from summer — and submit this request in writing before the school year ends, so the division knows you expect it.

When the IEP Team Skips ESY Consideration Entirely

If you attend an annual IEP meeting and the team does not discuss ESY at all — does not mention it, does not document a determination one way or the other — that is a procedural problem. Every compliant Virginia IEP for a student with a disability should contain a written determination about ESY, even if the determination is that ESY was considered and found not to be warranted.

If ESY was not discussed at your child's last IEP meeting, you can:

1. Request a reconvening of the IEP team to address ESY specifically — put this request in writing citing IDEA's requirement that ESY be considered
2. Request Prior Written Notice under 8VAC20-81-170 of the team's refusal to reconvene
3. File a state complaint with the VDOE if the IEP lacks any ESY determination and the team refuses to correct it

What ESY Services Look Like

ESY does not have to look the same as the regular school year program. Services may be shorter in duration, focused on maintaining specific skills rather than developing new ones, and may be delivered in different settings. The key requirements are that:

• The services are specifically designed to meet your child's individual needs (not a generic group program)
• Related services (OT, speech, ABA, etc.) are included if your child needs them to benefit from ESY
• The services are at no cost to the family

Schools sometimes offer "summer programs" that are generic enrichment rather than individually designed ESY services. If your child has speech therapy in their regular-year IEP and the school's summer program does not include speech, that is not compliant ESY for your child.

The Denial Tactics to Watch For

"Your child didn't regress last year." If the team has no formal data on regression — because no one collected it — this claim is not evidence-based. Challenge it by requesting the specific assessments or data points the team is relying on.

"ESY is only for students with the most severe disabilities." This is not what Virginia law says. The standard is regression and recoupment analysis for each individual student.

"We don't offer ESY in our division." All Virginia divisions are required to provide ESY when students qualify. If a division claims not to offer it, they may need to contract with another provider or cooperative.

"Your child can do summer school instead." Summer school for academic credit is not ESY. These are different programs with different legal bases and different purposes.

The Virginia IEP & 504 Advocacy Playbook includes a section on requesting and documenting ESY consideration, with template language for requesting regression/recoupment data collection and for challenging an ESY denial that relies on absent data. If your child loses skills every summer and returns to school having to relearn what they knew in May, ESY is worth fighting for — and the fight starts with a written request, not a hope that the team brings it up on their own.

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