If you are a school based OT, SLP, or special educator, you have already had the conversation with the team about who qualifies for ESY and what the goals will look like. The harder question is the one parents will ask in week three of June. "What do I do at home with this on the days they are not at ESY?" Extended school year carryover is the gap between the IEP goal page and the kitchen at 9 a.m. The visual scaffold makes it survivable.
What ESY covers and where it leaves off
IDEA Part B defines ESY services as those a child needs to receive FAPE when regression and recoupment data show the break would cost them. ESY is not enrichment, and it is not summer camp. The OSEP guidance is clear that services are individualized to the IEP. Most districts run ESY for a few hours a few days a week, which is a small slice of the summer for the student carrying the regression risk.
The gap is the rest of the week. The IEP goal is still active. The family is the only one in the room.
Why summer regression hits harder than the data captures
Three drivers school clinicians know but families may not.
- The cuing environment vanishes. The visual schedule on the classroom wall, the paraprofessional's prompting cadence, and the morning meeting sequence all stop. The student loses the prompts the IEP goal was built on.
- The peer model disappears. Generalization probes pulled from peer interaction lose their substrate.
- Sleep, food, and sensory routines drift. The conditions under which the goal could be practiced collapse.
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Where extended school year carryover earns its keep
A short visual home version of the ESY goal that the family can run in 10 minutes a day. Pulled directly from the IEP, photographed with the actual student in the actual home, and anchored to a time the family already controls. The clinician designs the scaffold. The family runs the rhythm. Recoupment data in September goes up because the goal got density across the gap.
VizyPlan was built by an autism dad and a licensed SLP for the summer carryover problem. The IEP goal becomes a routine card. The student sees themselves doing the step. The family does not have to invent the scaffold. The clinical work stays yours. The carryover travels with the family.
Download VizyPlan and start your 7-day free trial today. See what your ESY families would run between sessions. Just $9.99/month after your trial, no credit card required upfront.
VizyPlan was built by an autism dad and a licensed speech-language pathologist who needed something that did not exist. Start your free trial.
