You have the evaluation. It took months to get. It says, in plain language, that your daughter needs extended time and a quieter room for tests. You emailed the school. You got a warm reply and a meeting on the calendar.
The meeting went well. Everyone was kind. Nobody said no. Nothing was written down.
Here is why it felt like you had asked for a favor. At a public school, that document starts a process with deadlines behind it. At an independent school, it starts a conversation. Same document, same child, entirely different machinery.
Both of the short versions are wrong
You have probably read one of them. "Private schools are bound by Section 504" is published right now, as flat fact, on the public page of a Georgia family support organization that families reasonably trust. The mirror image, that private schools are not covered at all, is also in circulation.
If you were carrying either one, you were not careless. The accurate version is longer, and it is the one that holds up in a room.
What actually applies, and in what order
Section 504 follows federal money. The statute reaches "any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance" (29 U.S.C. 794). A private school that receives none is not a recipient, and has no Section 504 obligation at all.
Where 504 does reach a private school, the standard is lower than you are picturing. 34 CFR 104.39 says a covered school may not exclude a qualified student with a disability who can, "with minor adjustments," be provided an appropriate education within its existing program. Minor adjustments is the regulation's own phrase, not "reasonable accommodations," which people import from other contexts. It is materially weaker than what a public school owes. The same regulation also lets a covered school charge more where the additional charge is "justified by a substantial increase in cost." That is not a loophole. It is in the rule.
The ADA is a separate question with a separate answer. Title III lists "a nursery, elementary, secondary, undergraduate, or postgraduate private school, or other place of education" as a public accommodation (42 U.S.C. 12181), and that reaches private schools whether or not they take a dollar of federal money.
And the religious exemption is far wider than almost anyone assumes. Title III does not apply to "religious organizations or entities controlled by religious organizations" (42 U.S.C. 12187). Most people hear that and picture chapel. The Department of Justice's own Technical Assistance Manual says otherwise: "The exemption covers all of the activities of a religious entity, whether religious or secular." Its worked example is a congregation running a school for members and nonmembers alike, and the whole operation is exempt.
Which of these is true of your school is a question for the school, and for an attorney if the answer matters. I cannot tell you, and guessing would do you harm.
There is no IEP here, and a services plan is not one
If you enrolled your child in a private school yourself, 34 CFR 300.137 is about as blunt as regulations get: "No parentally-placed private school child with a disability has an individual right to receive some or all of the special education and related services that the child would receive if enrolled in a public school."
Services can still happen. They come through a services plan rather than an IEP, funded from a proportionate share of the district's federal Part B money, calculated by formula (34 CFR 300.133). The help available is capped by that formula, not by what your child needs.
The one lever you actually have
Here is the genuinely useful part. Under 34 CFR 300.131, each public school district must "locate, identify, and evaluate all children with disabilities who are enrolled by their parents in private, including religious, elementary schools and secondary schools located in the school district served by the LEA."
On paper, the district that owes this is the one where the school building sits, not necessarily the one where you live. That is what the regulation says.
In practice, metro Atlanta districts route these requests differently, and the difference matters if your child's school is in a different district than your house. A special education professional working in these districts reports that Cobb routes by your home feeder school, while Fulton and DeKalb go by the location of the school your child attends.
So do not assume. Before you send anything, call the special education office and ask which district owns the request for your address and your child's school. It is a two minute call, and sending it to the wrong office is the most common way these requests quietly go nowhere.
Be precise about what it gets you. Child Find is an obligation to locate, identify, and evaluate. It is not an obligation to serve, and nothing in the evaluation creates a right to services, because 300.137 still applies afterward.
Even so, it is worth having. An evaluation is documentation you own, and it does not disappear when the meeting ends.
One Georgia program that is not purely additive
The Georgia Special Needs Scholarship, usually called SB 10 after the 2007 bill that created it, is for a student who spent a full prior school year in a Georgia public school and was served there under an IEP. That makes it a bridge out of public school rather than something a family already in private school can apply for.
The money is not a flat award, and this surprises most families. It is built from the state funding your child's public school actually earned for them the year before, which is calculated from the services and supports in their IEP. So two students with the same diagnosis can be funded very differently, and the amount tracks the level of service the public school was providing rather than what the private school costs or what your child needs now. Published maximums sit well above what most families are offered. The only number worth planning around is the one on your own award notice or the state's own calculator, not a figure you heard from another family.
The part that actually needs a decision is what it costs you. The State Board rule that governs it, 160-5-1-.34, says at section (6)(e) that "acceptance of scholarship shall have the same effect as a parental refusal to consent to services in a public school pursuant to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act," that it "waives a parent's rights under IDEA," and that "therefore, a private school is not required to follow a student's IEP developed by the public school."
I am not telling you to take it or to skip it. The word scholarship makes it sound purely additive and the rule says it is not. If that is a live decision in your house, talk to a special education advocate or an attorney before you sign anything.
The question that changes the meeting
Everything above is about what is owed. In the room, that is almost never the question that gets you anywhere.
What independent schools do have is discretion, and a real interest in keeping your family. So the parents who get furthest usually stop asking what the school has to do and start asking what it is willing to do.
Bring the ask, then bring the follow up:
"Of the things I have listed, which ones can you do? Would you put what we agree on in an email, so we are both working from the same page?"
That is a communication tool, not a legal maneuver. It turns goodwill into something specific and it survives a teacher change. If the school will write it down, you have a plan. If nothing can be written down, that is also information, and better to have now than at the end of the year.
What you can try this week
Find out which public school district your child's school building sits in, and look up that district's special education contact. That is where a Child Find evaluation request goes.
Ask your kid one specific question at a neutral time. Not at 7:15 in the morning. Try: "If you could get rid of one class period, which one, and what actually happens in it?" Concrete is what a school can act on.
When to reach out
We provide clinical support. We do not provide legal advice or advocacy representation, and if what you need is someone to sit beside you in a meeting or read a contract, that is a special education advocate or an attorney.
Where we can help is the part underneath the paperwork. A kid who has decided they are the problem. Anxiety that has started to look like refusal. A household quietly reorganized around getting one person through the school day. If that sounds like your house, a conversation is worth having. We offer a free consultation and you can reach us at (404) 649-0756.
This is general educational information, not therapy or individual clinical advice, and reading it does not create a professional relationship. If you are in crisis, call or text 988. In an emergency, call 911.
