Every September, education administrators assure families that the transition to middle or high school will be smooth, that each Individual Education Plan will follow the student like a guiding light through the unfamiliar corridors, that the new teachers will arrive prepared and informed.
For parents of disabled or neurodivergent children, those assurances carry the weight of years of advocacy, documentation, and hope. We are told that the plan will travel with our child, that her needs will be understood before the first bell rings, that the supports she depends upon will appear as promised.
Yet when my AuDHD daughter entered high school this fall, the silence around her accommodations spoke louder than any welcome. Teachers greeted her warmly but without preparation; the plan that had been built over years of observation, trial, and care had not been opened, and the scaffolding she relied upon often evaporated. Weeks passed before her accommodations began to take shape again. The delay transformed what could have been a gentle ascent into a cliff-edge of uncertainty.
The article we wish every administrator would read
In Edutopia, Richard Celebre offers a detailed roadmap for how schools can create a genuinely supportive transition for students with IEPs. His piece, Supporting a Smooth Transition to Middle School for Students With IEPs, describes what careful planning looks like when educators treat continuity as a collective responsibility rather than a clerical task. He writes of starting the process as early as October, of ensuring that case managers, counsellors, and administrators communicate across schools long before the student arrives, of involving families early and often.
He reminds us that transition is a process, not a single meeting. That phrase carries profound truth. For students with complex support needs, every delay compounds distress. Every day without accommodation communicates something corrosive: that promises of inclusion exist in theory, but practice remains optional.
The emotional cost of administrative delay
When a new school year begins without preparation, the child feels it first. The assignments without accommodations, the expectations without context, the feedback that assumes capacities not yet scaffolded—all of it signals that her difference has once again been rendered invisible. Parents feel it next, in the exhaustion of re-explaining every support, of re-forwarding every document, of hearing that the plan “must have gotten lost in transition.”
The cost of this bureaucratic amnesia is borne in our children’s bodies—through anxiety, shutdown, and withdrawal. For families, it is measured in hours of unpaid labour, in meetings requested and minutes drafted, in the erosion of trust that once held faint optimism.
-
No accidents left to excuse
When I first read the Canary Collective’s Systemic Abuse in Education: Breaking the Cycle and Kim Block’s companion essay Is this Systemic Oppression or Systemic Abuse?, I did not feel revelation so much as recognition. I have called what happens to disabled and neurodivergent children in…
What families deserve
Families deserve transition planning that reflects the standard outlined in Celebre’s article: early coordination, continuous communication, and leadership accountability. They deserve confirmation that the child’s plan has been read, discussed, and implemented before classes begin. They deserve systems designed for reliability rather than emergency, triage, or repair.
Because when transition is handled with care, it teaches something larger—that inclusion is not an act of charity or a favour granted by well-meaning educators, but a right embedded in the fabric of public education.
A call to vigilance and collective action
As the year progresses and schools begin to plan next year’s transitions, I urge every administrator to treat this moment as an ethical mandate. Begin early, name a responsible coordinator, meet the family before the winter holidays, and ensure that each teacher enters September equipped to meet their students as they are.
For families, share your stories, demand accountability, and remind the system that continuity of support is not a courtesy but a condition of justice. The difference between a smooth transition and a traumatic one lies entirely in institutional design and education policy.
Read the original piece: Supporting a Smooth Transition to Middle School for Students With IEPs — Edutopia, October 27, 2025
