Suspended, Removed or Facing Expulsion
Here is what has to happen next.
If your child has an IEP or 504 plan, the school must hold a Manifestation Determination Review before they can make a placement change, and that meeting has to happen on a strict timeline.
Get Help NowVideo: What happens at a Manifestation Determination Review
Response commitment: submissions during business hours get a reply within 2 hours. Outside business hours or on weekends, expect a response within 24 hours.
The essentials
The 10-day rule and the two questions that decide everything
A school cannot simply remove your child indefinitely for behavior connected to their disability. Once a removal passes 10 school days, total or consecutive, in a school year, it becomes a change of placement, and the district must hold a Manifestation Determination Review (MDR) within 10 school days of that decision.
Cumulative or consecutive removal beyond this threshold is treated as a change of placement and triggers the MDR requirement.
Once the district decides to change placement, the manifestation determination meeting must happen within 10 school days of that decision.
At the MDR, the team answers two questions: was the behavior caused by the disability, and did the school's failure to implement the IEP contribute to it? A yes to either means the school must return your child to their placement and put a behavior plan in place instead of continuing discipline.
Exception: incidents involving weapons, drugs, or serious bodily injury allow removal to an alternative setting for up to 45 school days regardless of the MDR outcome.
What the committee has to review
The IEP team cannot skip the paperwork
The MDR committee is required to review all relevant information in your child's file: the current IEP, any evaluations or observations, and input from you as the parent. It has to consider the Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) and Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) together, not the incident in isolation. If your child does not have an FBA or BIP despite a pattern of behavior, or if the district never actually implemented the plan on paper, that gap is relevant to the manifestation determination itself.
Districts sometimes treat the MDR as a formality: a short meeting, a quick vote, and a return to the same disciplinary path they had already planned. The law does not allow that. The committee has to show its work.
If you disagree with the outcome
You can challenge an MDR decision, but the clock is short
If you disagree with the committee's finding, you can request an expedited due process hearing. In most cases, your child stays in their current placement, or the interim alternative educational setting, while that hearing is pending, rather than moving to the more restrictive placement the district wants. MDR disputes move on a compressed, deadline-driven timeline, and missing a window can cost you the protection the law gives you.
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