Public schools receive federal financial assistance and are, therefore, required by law to adhere to the regulations promulgated under Section 504.
 

The person,

1) has a mental or physical impairment which substantially limits one or more of such persons major life activities such as caring for oneself, walking, seeing, speaking, learning, performing manual tasks, hearing, breathing or working;

2) the person has a record of such impairment; and

3) is regarded as having such an impairment.

A 504 Education Plan provides classroom accommodations for students who need them.

A 504 Education Plan places on record specific classroom accommodations designed to assist the student with a medically documented disability perform to the best of their abilities.

The plan must be reviewed and followed by all academic (Science, Social Studies, English, Math) and nonacademic (Physical Education, Art, Music) which the child has classes.

For all 504 Education Plans, medical documentation of the child’s disability is required.

Such medical documentation must be recent   within   in order for the 504 plan to be accepted by the local school department and enacted by the school.

The need for recent medical documentation can be explained by the fact that 504 plans are reviewed on a yearly basis by the school the child currently attends.

The plan may also be revisited at any time at the request of the parent or guardian or by any of the child’s teachers.

Such frequent review and revision of the plan ensures the child’s needs are being met.

Examples of some accommodations are: preferential seating; having instructions repeated frequently; visual aids, charts and graphs; organizational aids such as a homework planner or journal; colored as opposed to black and white copies of graphs and charts; and, allowing for breaks when needed.