Your Child Was Suspended. Now What?

Students with IEPs get suspended far more than other students. At a City Council hearing last year, the Education Committee Chair Rita Joseph shared that students with disabilities got 43% of the city’s long suspensions in 2023–24, though they make up only 22% of the student population.

We presented three situations NYC parents describe to Jenn Choi, founder of Jenn Choi Advocates, who has spent years helping NYC families navigate the IEP process. Here’s what she told us.

As told to Lighthouse by Jenn Choi

Say your child has an IEP. The school calls midday and asks you to come pick them up. They had a hard morning. The school suggests they stay home tomorrow too, to reset. Nobody uses the word suspension. There’s no letter.

Jenn: This happens all the time. Your child might be throwing things, hurting themselves, or crouched under a desk and won’t come out.

The school may not call it a suspension. But if you’re asked to take your child home, that’s an informal suspension. It does not help your child when their suspensions are informal and not documented.

There’s a Chancellor’s Regulation (A-443) that covers discipline, and it’s more than 70 pages long. There are also separate Discipline Codes containing students’ bill of rights for older and younger students that are each over 40 pages long.

Along with many regulations, the materials describe the limits on how often a school can pull a child out of class due to unmanageable behavior.

When the school calls you to tell you about pulling your child out of class, do they tell you how many times they are allowed to do this? The person calling you may not know the limits themselves.

So before anything else, ask what happened. Hit record if you like - just for the sake of better notetaking. Ask them to put it in writing, because that might be the only report you get.

You can still pick up your child, but consider asking why exactly you have to do this. It’s definitely fair to ask: Is sending my child home the right thing for my child?

When considering how and why children repeat behaviors, it’s logical to ask, “If I take them home today, will I be indirectly encouraging her to do this again tomorrow.” You’re not a bad parent for asking.

If it keeps happening, ask for the data. If they tell you it’s the tenth time, say: I’m glad you told me. Can you give me the data on all the other times? They’re supposed to write it down.

A behavior that keeps pulling your child out of class is a reason to look at the IEP. It’s the school’s job to figure out why because that behavior is preventing your child’s access to the curriculum.

Most important:

Say your child has an IEP and goes to a public school. The school calls: there was an incident with another student, and someone got hurt. The principal wants to meet tomorrow morning to talk about next steps. You expect a suspension. Your child doesn’t have a dedicated para, and you suspect no one was watching. You feel like you failed as a parent.

Jenn: Ask every question you can while you’re on that call. The minute you hang up, a million questions will come to your mind. Who saw this? What happened? When did it happen? Where was my child? What did my child say? What did you say to my child after this happened? What reports exist?

The person calling you probably didn’t see it. The principal may tell you, “I wasn’t there, but this is what they reported to me.” Gather what you can yourself. Talk to your child, and help them write down their story.

If a friend of your child’s saw it, talk to the friend. Importantly, request to speak to the adult who saw what happened as soon as possible. While you are waiting for that meeting, write down all your questions.

It’s okay to ask: Is this a suspension? What is the plan? If they don’t have a plan yet, fine. Let’s work together. There is no reason why they can’t hear you out, your child’s actions were very likely related to their disabilities.

Ask if there’s a suspension packet. Then you’ll know if it’s a principal’s suspension or a superintendent’s suspension, which is a much bigger deal.

You may already be familiar with your child’s behaviors from informal reports from teachers. If there is nothing planned to work on those behaviors then it’s possible that your child’s behavior can worsen. If your child matches this profile, consider that you may get this call someday.

Write your questions down now, and keep them in your phone. It is really okay to ask whoever is calling you to give you a minute to collect yourself. During that time, you can breathe, look for your prepared list, and figure out how to record your phone call.

Sometimes phone calls are made because that is more humane and sometimes they are made because the caller is preventing putting anything in writing.

Either way, you earn respect when you make things formal. That is what you want. You want everyone to follow the rules. We have good rules in this state.

Most important:

Say your child has an IEP and goes to a charter school. When they get overwhelmed, they melt down and can get aggressive. There’s a para, but the para doesn’t catch the warning signs in time. Now your child is suspended for more than a month. The school promised remote classes, but weeks later they haven’t started. Someone tells you to get a lawyer and hands you a long list.

Jenn: A child suspended a long time has most likely shown these behaviors before. Maybe they’ve been suspended before. Either way, make sure a Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) gets done, and that it answers all your questions.

If it doesn’t, request an independent FBA at the public expense by disagreeing with the FBA done by the district.

Talk to legal counsel. In NYC Public Schools, a suspension for 6 or more days is called a “superintendent’s suspension.” That type of suspension will require a hearing with a judge, and it really feels like court. There’s a hearing officer in the middle, the school on one side, and you on the other.

Even as a professional advocate, I would call a lawyer for my own client if dealing with a superintendent’s suspension, especially if the suspension term was for a long period of time.

That said, this student in the above example attends a charter school so instead of the Chancellor’s regulations, the charter school will follow their own procedures guided by state charter law.

The good news is that there are free “suspension clinics” in our city, many led by lawyers, with law students doing the work. They do these hearings frequently. Please use this service and do not go by yourself. See the full list of free suspension hearing help. If you hire a lawyer, make sure they handle suspensions. Not every lawyer does.

After reviewing the problems, you may want more than an FBA. You may want a neuropsychological evaluation to look at the problem as a whole. Maybe there’s a new diagnosis to discover.

A good time to ask for these comprehensive evaluations—including independent ones at the public expense—is when a student is suspended and there’s urgency to learn more about the student’s needs.

While your child is suspended, they’re supposed to be getting their curriculum work, their special education and related services—including counseling if mandated on the IEP. All of it. You can even hold an IEP meeting. There’s no suspension of IEP meetings during a suspension.

Most important:

A Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) asks one question: Why is my child doing this? It looks at what happens right before the behavior, and right after it. If a child runs out of math class because they’re embarrassed they can’t do the math, telling them to stop running doesn’t fix it. Still, it may not be obvious that math is the problem.

Sadly, people think that FBAs are only for kids who hit or disrupt class. A child who avoids work, hides under a table, stops showing up, cries nonstop, or keeps going to the nurse when they’re not sick may need one too.

All of these behaviors will prevent your student from learning and may even disrupt the class.

You can ask for an FBA at any time, after any suspension or removal or to examine a pattern you are seeing. If the school says no, get that decision in writing—in particular, a Prior Written Notice of Recommendation that clarifies their denial.

You can disagree and ask for an independent FBA evaluation at public expense. The same goes if you disagree with the FBA the school did, or with the Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) that comes out of it.

Be at every meeting or any decision point for the FBA and BIP. Ask them about the procedure and make sure it matches up to state standards. Help pick which behaviors to target. You know things the team may not, like what the gym teacher told you and the gym teacher wasn’t part of the FBA team.

Parents should know that not every FBA leads to a Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP). Sometimes the answer is just more help in math.

Parts or all of the behavior intervention needs will probably end up on the IEP, and if you are considering applying to other schools, they may ask to see your child’s IEP.

That said, a problem no one deals with will hurt your child more than a record of it. Deal with it early, before it gets worse. And if the school has no data but the behaviors are still happening, then you need to pressure the school to get things documented.

You should also start taking data yourself. Save all your communications in an organized way. It’s hard and frustrating, but worth it.

Remember, that if your child’s behavior is caused in some way due to disability, it is imperative that the school work on dealing with it. That is one way to measure the quality of your child’s IEP being reasonably calculated to meet your child’s individual needs.

I often see students whose primary disability isn’t an emotional disability, and yet their behavior still comes from that disability, made worse when their IEP wasn’t written or carried out properly.

If there is a suspension of more than 10 consecutive days, the district must have a procedure known as a Manifestation Determination Review (MDR). The sooner you can have that done the better, because it’s a formal conversation to determine whether your child’s behavior was due to their disability and/or due to inappropriate implementation.

I had a client whose only service was a related service. The student hadn’t met a single IEP goal in three years. The review found the behavior was due to the disability and to the IEP not being provided properly. For such instances, the suspension then has to be canceled and an FBA must begin immediately.

Still, oftentimes, the suspension will have started before the MDR, which means the suspension, even if deemed wrongfully ordered, happened. You can’t undo the experience.

A suspension should mean something, too. Discipline means teaching: don’t do this, do that instead. If a child sits in a room all day with one adult and they read books and do their work, could that consequence be considered a reward? That is what an in-school suspension often looks like.

Most important:

To any parent who feels awful that you haven’t done any of the above: please forgive yourself. It’s never too late. It’s not like the school taught you all of these things and even if they did, it’s hard to learn when you are emotional.

The longer the suspension, the more help your child needs. Try thinking about how the length of a suspension is a measure of how much of the disability isn’t being addressed.

Almost always, a student is suspended because of something going on with the IEP.

So don’t treat the suspension as the final outcome. Look at it like a new door opening. Get evaluations and hold an IEP meeting. Seek advice from friends, community organizations, private providers, advocates, and/or attorneys on whether your child needs a neuropsychological evaluation.

Someone at the school might also have a suggestion but their lack of a suggestion besides suspending a student is also a sign that you need to find advice elsewhere.

So every call, every letter, every complaint about your child, try to welcome it. Information is gold as it gives you a reason to ask for more help.

It doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. It means this is a problem you can’t solve by yourself. And you should not be forced to solve this by yourself: your child with an IEP is entitled to an individualized education program designed to meet their unique needs so that they can make meaningful progress.

Suspensions are indicators that the opposite is happening.

Most important:

Jenn Choi is the Founding Principal of Jenn Choi Advocates, LLC, and has spent years helping New York City families navigate the IEP process to secure appropriate access and participation for families of students with disabilities.

From the Lighthouse editors

Yes. But a child with an IEP has extra protections. If a suspension, or a string of removals, keeps your child out of their program for more than 10 school days in a school year, the school must hold a manifestation determination review. That meeting decides whether the behavior came from the disability, or from an IEP that wasn’t followed. During any suspension, your child is still owed the services on their IEP.

It depends on the kind. A principal’s suspension, one to five days, does not go on your child’s permanent record. A superintendent’s suspension, six days or more, does. The hearing officer can order it expunged, or taken off the record, at a later date. Ask about this at the hearing.

Your child is kept out of class but stays in the school building, usually in a separate room with an adult. As Jenn notes above, that often means a day of reading and worksheets, which may not teach your child much.

Several groups represent NYC families at suspension hearings for free, some with law students doing the work. See the full list, with phone numbers.