Foster Care School-Transition Binder (U.S. Edition)

Enrolling a foster child in a new school, without guessing

A placement changes and the school paperwork arrives all at once — enrollment forms, missing immunization records, an IEP that lives in another district, a medication form that needs a signature from someone who may not be you. This binder is the place to put all of it. It walks through what federal law actually requires, what is only federal guidance, and what your state or district decides for itself, and it leaves you room to write down what you were told and by whom.

What is inside

• A best-interest determination worksheet covering the factors federal guidance lists, and stating plainly that transportation cost and administrative burden are not among them
• A records request tracker: transcripts, attendance, course history, immunizations and IEP or 504 plans, with the school's own duty to request them spelled out
• An authority matrix for enrollment, routine permissions, education records, special-education consent and medical consent — the five that get confused most often
• IEP continuity for in-state, interstate and summer transfers, including extended school year services
• Medication and emergency-plan pages, with space to record verbal information and mark it unverified until confirmed
• A consolidated deadline tracker for FERPA records access, enrollment and immunization clocks
• A foster care education contact for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, taken from the Department of Education's published list
• 395 fillable form fields — type and save, or print and write

Who it is for

Foster parents, kinship caregivers and relative placements handling a school change, and the caseworkers and advocates who help them. It is written for the United States. It is an organizer, not legal advice: where a rule depends on your state, district or agency, the binder says so and gives you a place to record what you are told rather than printing a guess.