We recently requested 4 separate IEE's; psycho-educational, OT, PT and ST.  The district had done those evaluations already and they did approve the IEE's.  However, the district is capping the total amount it will pay for all 4 of these evaluations because they are treating it as 1 comprehensive evaluation and responded as such when I asked them to provide the area of law that supports this: In accordance with IDEA 34 CFR 300.502, a parent is entitled to only one IEE at public expense each time the District conducts an evaluation with which the parent disagrees.   During the evaluation process, the District is required to assess a child in all areas related to the suspected disability, including, if appropriate, health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities (34 CFR § 300.304(c)(4)).  As a result, it is common for multiple professionals (e.g., school psychologists, speech-language pathologists, OTs, PTs, Behavioral Interventionists, etc.) to participate in the evaluation process.  However, it is still only considered one comprehensive evaluation, meaning parents are only entitled to one IEE.   Since the total for all 4 evaluations is going to cost more than the "capped amount", is the parent responsible for paying the difference for the capped amount and what the provider bills for the IEE's?  

Ask them to show you where the cap is listed, in state regs or IDEA.

Thank you for your advice and will do.  On a similar note, the district advises us that they will not pay for the IEE provider to attend the IEP meeting to discuss IEE report; since they have a district employee whom they claim would be qualified to interpret the IEE report, and that if we wanted the IEE provider to attend, the parents are required to pay them out of pocket.  The one that we are most concerned about is the psycho-educational eval which is being done by a psychologist. It is pretty intensive and as part of the evaluation they are testing for suspected overlooked ASD diagnoses. I can't imagine that the district would be qualified to discuss that. 

 

Unless someone else knows of an exception, school districts are not required to pay for an IEE provider to attend an IEP meeting.  YOU may think they're not qualified to discuss that, but THEY are not going to think/say/admit that.  They are going to stand by their evaluations and the staff they have to interpret them.  If the school district thought they didn't have the appropriate staff "inhouse" to do a certain evaluation, they would have procured an outside evaluator to do the school eval.  This is all theoretical, of course, and may not be the case in reality, but that's the position the school district is going to take.

If you really want the IEE provider to attend, here are a few things you can do to reduce the cost of having to pay him/her:

1) Have them attend via Zoom.

2) Ask the IEP team ahead of time to have them go first on the agenda so that they can leave.  Or have a specific time at which they participate.  That way they're not sitting through the entire meeting racking up their billable hours.

3) Pay them to write up an additional report with anything you think would be helpful to delineate or clarify from the evaluation (specifically referring to present level, IEP goals, and accommodations) which you can provide to the IEP team prior to the meeting.

With an IEE, the school pays for the eval & the final product is the eval report.  It is on the parent to pay the evaluator to attend the meeting where they go over the report.  I've not seen a school pay for this.

It's not FAPE if the parent has to pay for part of the cost of the IEE.  Ask the district for names of people who do psycho-educational, OT, PT and ST evals.  See how much their suggestions cost and if it fits the budget they gave you.  This is one eval with 4 pieces.  It's going to cost more than an eval with only one or two areas that need to be assessed.

IEPs are not one-size-fits-all.  What they cost isn't going to be one-size either.  A student with more complex needs will need a more complicated eval and complicated means it's going to cost more.