Chris: Our school district agreed to pay for the IEE and reimbursed us for the evaluation but not for the attendance of the evaluator at the IEP meeting. 5 months after the IEP we were told that SD did not consider this part of the IEE. We expected that having the evaluator in attendance was a crucial part of the IEE.
There is one other trick that sometimes works. If the child’s primary writes a strong referral/order for testing, your insurance may be willing to pay for testing. The evaluator may be able/willing to submit to insurance for some “testing” to get reimbursement for the time spent at the meeting.
Also please note that you can sometimes save some money by having the evaluator participate by phone. But keep in mind that a personal presence at a meeting is often more compelling.
Chris – unfortunately, this is par for the course. There is a trick that sometimes works. You can ask the evaluator to omit a couple of tests that are less important, or that the district did and you don’t dispute, so as to allow some margin for error with the charges. Then if the evaluator is nice, s/he can fudge the charges so that the fee the district pays is enough for the evaluator to attend the meeting without charging extra. I have seen an evaluator do this for a low-income mother who would not have been able to pay the fee for attendance at the meeting.