What is Equitable Participation (EP) of Services?
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a federal law that requires each state to ensure that a free appropriate public education (FAPE) is available to all public school enrolled eligible children with disabilities residing in that state. Children who are enrolled by their parents /guardians in private schools, including religious schools, are often referred to as “parentally-placed private school children”. Some of those children may also have educational disabilities and the IDEA benefits available to them differ from the benefits for children with disabilities in public schools. * Students attending private schools, or nonpublic schools do not have an individual entitlement to the services they would receive if they were enrolled in a public school. Therefore, neither Intermediate Unit 26 nor the School District of Philadelphia is required to provide a Service Plan (nonpublic school version of a public-school Individual Education Plan or IEP) or provide remedial education services for parentally-placed private school students identified with a disability under IDEA.
The yearly dollar value of the IU 26 IDEA award to be used for EP services to nonpublic school students and/or staff is a function of the number of identified disabled nonpublic schools students attending schools in Philadelphia County as a percentage of all identified disabled students (public and private) attending schools in Philadelphia County. The nature of the services to be offered yearly with those EP dollars is determined through consultation with nonpublic school representatives. Through this meaningful and timely consultation process between the private schools and IU26, EP services are determined. Depending on the amount of EP funds available, the decision may be that only services such as teacher consultation and/or teacher professional development only will be provided. In such circumstances, there would be no individual nonpublic school student EP Service Plan development or support provided to individual students determined to have an educational disability. **