Litchfield County is kind of a mix of the two Connecticuts. Though having lived in both CT and now in VA. Ajas is right in that there is a much greater variation in types of communities in VA than there is in CT. Certainly, CT is not monolithic but there is still a high degree of commonalities among communities.
The coal country of southwest Virginia is significantly different than the high tech Northern Virginia suburbs. There is not the same degree of disparity in CT. Even within school districts there's huge discrepancies, such as the district Ajas and I both live in. My daughter's MS has 1,640 students in a school built to hold 1,239 students. She has never attended a school with fewer than 1,000 students. However, just south of us in the same county there is a middle school that is under capacity (and yet it's having an addition built on it so that it is appropriately sized for the HS it feeds) and there are elementary schools with fewer than 100 students. Even demographics varies widely in a 4 to 5 mile radius. DD's MS and the HS she will attend is majority minority; the number of Asian (particularly south Asian) students is equivalent to or exceeds the number of white students. However, in the ES/MS/HS cluster that adjoins our cluster, it is predominantly white. The high schools in those two clusters are only 2.5 miles apart. The eastern part of our county is predominantly Hispanic and lower income Hispanic. The western part of the county is made up of farms and huge landed estates (it's VA horse country). The issues facing the eastern part of the county (language issues, need for reduced lunch) are different than the middle of the county (overcrowded schools) and are different than the west (under enrollment of small schools).
I can tell you even within the cluster that food allergy issues/504 are handled differently. The MS has been pretty proactive, but in no way perfect. As with anything in food allergies, it really is dependent on the staff that you deal with. I have another friend in the same district whose daughter had a reaction during a school party. She had to go to the ER. And yet, nothing has changed in the district. There was still food at field day and an ice cream social sponsored by the PTO today.
lakeswimr, I think you missed my point. Of course, it's important to your family that the IHCP is great and well implemented. It is not relevant in the grand scheme of things if CT misleads parents into thinking that an IHCP affords the same legal rights. It doesn't. Also, what you describe in terms of the IHCP is not so much how good the plan is itself but how well it is implemented. I have a good 504 but there still have been issues with things falling through the cracks. I, however, could make a legal stink if I wanted to that I would not be able to make if I only had an IHCP.