ESY Is Coming!
Sensory Rucksacks, Missing Lunch Programs, and Surviving the Mid-Summer Pivot
🎙️ Episode 2: ESY Is Coming!
🎙️Prefer to listen? Hit play above to hear the full story, or read along below!
Good morning! I am so glad you tuned in today. If you’ve got your coffee ready to go, take a sip, sit back, and let's chat. Welcome back to …Life with a Dollop of Autism
📆 If you glance at the calendar, we are staring right down the barrel of July, which means the collective sigh of relief or the collective wave of anxiety is hitting special education households everywhere. Why? Because ESY is officially arriving.
Extended. School. Year.
Whether your child’s school bus or van is about to start pulling up for those few short weeks of summer services, or you are a parent sitting at home because your child didn't qualify and you're feeling completely marooned in the summer void, today’s episode is for you. We are pulling back the curtain on the reality of ESY, the logistics of the mid-summer pivot, and how to manage the unique chaos it brings. Let’s get into it.
🚌 The Story: The Mid-Summer Bus Pivot
There is a massive misconception in the neurotypical world that ESY is just "summer camp provided by the school." Let me tell you right now: this is not summer camp. It is a highly specialized, stripped-down maintenance program. And while it is an absolute lifeline, it also introduces a brand-new flavor of chaos right into the middle of your summer.
Think about the logistics. Just when your child has finally—finally—begun to settle into the unstructured rhythm of being home for Summer break, suddenly the script flips again. The school van is coming back, but the timeline is completely different. It’s a shortened day, and this year, it means an entirely unfamiliar building for us. A classroom that doesn’t have their familiar desks, their familiar bathroom, or their familiar people.
Leo will script non stop during the days approaching changes like this. School is a ball of anxiety for him because it can be so overwhelming and unpredictable. When Benny prepares for a shift like this, the visual schedules have to come back out in full force. We have to map out the shortened day. First, the van. Second, school for a little bit. Third, the van home. Fourth, lunch at the kitchen table.
Because this year? The school district threw an absolutely massive wrench right into the mix. They aren’t providing lunch.
Now, from the outside looking in, people might think, "Big deal, Abby, just pack a lunch." Oh, we do that. We always do that. But you have to understand the mind of a child who is developmentally three years old, but who has been navigating this exact, predictable school routine every summer for eleven years.
With no school lunch program this year, the lunch crew ladies won’t be there. There is no line to stand in. Nobody gets to type their student number into the keypad. Nobody gets to grab that extra bag of chips or that ice cream sandwich treat at the end. To Benny, that isn't just a menu change—it is total confusion and structural chaos.
😩 Breathe, mom. You got this. It’s another pivot in a life completely full of them. Another battle plan to prepare. From the outside looking in, it’s a tiny blip and a shoulder shrug. But in our house? It’s another mountain pass in a world that has no roads.
And on top of the mental routine cracking, let's talk about the physical reality of the summer heat. An autistic kid loading onto a hot school bus or a van in the middle of July is a sensory powder keg. The noise, the temperature, the seats might be sticky—it means the sensory rucksack has to be packed entirely differently than it is in November. We’re talking about water bottles with ice packs, cooling towels, and ensuring his heavy, grounding boots are laced tight to keep him anchored against the sensory overload of a July commute.
And that overload it doesn't stop at the school doors because the physical environment itself undergoes a massive shift. By the time ESY starts, the regular classrooms have been completely packed away for the summer—desks stacked, walls stripped bare, and everything locked up until fall. Because Extended School Year programs operate on a total shoestring budget, we are almost always functioning in borrowed classrooms. It feels temporary because it is. And in July, these buildings turn into absolute pressure cookers. Without adequate air conditioning, you are asking students who already struggle with sensory regulation to focus and feel safe in a room that is sweltering and completely unfamiliar. It is a massive hurdle, and yet, we show up and try to make it work year after year.
It’s no wonder the district struggles every single year to get certified teachers and paraprofessionals to sign up for ESY. When you look at the conditions—sweltering, stripped-down classrooms, shoestring budgets, and intense behavioral needs—it’s an incredibly tough sell. Because of that staffing shortage, we often end up relying heavily on contracted substitutes. These are people stepping in and doing their absolute best, but they’re suddenly tasked with managing complex groups of kids they don't know, kids they don't understand, and kids they haven't built a baseline of trust with.
On paper, ESY is supposed to prevent summer regression. And sure, in some ways, it keeps certain skills from slipping entirely. But in other ways, the sheer chaos of the environment creates a whole host of new sensory overloads and behavioral issues that wouldn't happen in a stable, well-resourced routine. Yet, year after year, we keep sending them. Because at the end of the day, when you're a parent or an educator looking at a long, empty summer, you ask yourself: What else can we do?
And for the parents whose kids didn't qualify? I see you. It is so hard to watch that bus pick up another child on your street while you are left behind to figure out the 14-hour daily schedule all on your own. But whether you are packing a backpack this week or continuing to build your own summer program at home, the goal remains exactly the same: keeping our kids regulated, keeping them safe, and surviving the shift.
🧐 The IEP Translator (Summer Edition)
It’s time for the IEP Translator, where we take that heavy academic jargon from your annual meetings and turn it into real-world, kitchen-table terms.
Today, we are translating the actual standard for how a child even gets into the ESY program. The phrase is: Maintenance of Skills to Prevent Critical Regression. In an IEP meeting, the district administrator might lean across the table and say, 'ESY is not designed for the acquisition of new skills or peer socialization; it is strictly data-dependent based on the maintenance of critical skills.'
Here is the translation:
ESY is not summer school. They are not there to learn long division or master a brand-new communication device. Legally, the school district is only providing these weeks to act as a dam holding back the flood of regression that can happen over longer breaks with kids who have slow processing speeds or working memory deficits. In the paperwork, they’ll call this an Executive Functioning Deficit or a Psychological Processing Impairment. But what that actually means at the kitchen table is that it takes twice as long for your child to hold onto a multi-step direction before it evaporates.
It just…vanishes.
So, ESY isn’t about getting ahead. They are simply keeping the pilot light lit on the skills your child worked so hard to gain from September to June.
Here is my kitchen-table advice: If your child is in ESY right now, or soon to start like my kids are - do not look at their daily communication log and panic because they aren't bringing home new reading levels. If they come home regulated, if they maintained their basic functional communication, and if they didn't lose ground on their behavior plan—that is a massive legal and personal success. ESY did its job."
🏆 The Kitchen Table Win
We close out every single episode with a Kitchen Table Win, because we don't wait for the giant milestones to celebrate.
This week’s win belongs to the prep work. Joe and I spent the evening laying out the visual schedule for the upcoming ESY routine. We sat down with Leo and Benny, walked through the steps, and practiced tracking the icons. The win wasn't a flawless, melt-down free school day—because school hasn't even started yet. The win was the quiet, focused five minutes of joint attention where Benny and Leo looked at their schedules, looked at us, and gave that little nod of understanding. We gave those Autistic brains the gift of predictability before the van ever shows up.
If your week is messy, if the upcoming schedule change is making your stomach turn, or if you're just tired of spinning plates—look for your prep win today. Did you pack the backpack early? Did you take a quiet minute for yourself before the morning rush? That is your gold medal.
Thank you for tuning in for Life with a Dollop of Autism. If these couple of episodes gave you a little bit of oxygen this Summer, share it with a friend, leave a comment, and hit that subscribe button. Until next time, keep your boots grounded and your perspective high. I'm Abby, and I'll talk to you soon.
